


Magnificently Mesmerizing Halcyon Romances

by Signel_chan



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fire Emblem, Alternate Universe - Talentswap (Dangan Ronpa), Babies, Blood, Demons, Dreams, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Gyms, Haircuts, Medical Conditions, Momoharu Week 2020, Outer Space, Rabbits, Romantic Fluff, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23985466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: No matter the context, no matter the way, shape, or form that they exist, the love shared between one Kaito Momota and one Maki Harukawa is meant to be written on the stars, whether they've found that love yet or not.Momoharu Week 2020 Fic Compilation
Relationships: Harukawa Maki/Momota Kaito
Comments: 29
Kudos: 34





	1. For Want of a Haircut

**Author's Note:**

> because if you abbreviate the title, you get...look, I like titles I can shorten or abbreviate to mean something, so being ab;e to call this the "mmhr fic" makes my life 10x easier. also, yes, 13 fics in a week, y'all better buckle in because this is going to get intense.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day One, Prompt One: Confession

The first thing anyone ever noticed about Maki was the fact that her hair was much longer than someone who claimed to kill people for a living should have had it. She frequently switched up how she wore it, between pigtails and a single ponytail, between braids and buns, and yet no matter how it was styled it often still hung down to her waist and beyond. It was a nuisance in the mornings and after she’d take a shower, needing to give it ample time to dry before she could go anywhere and not worry about her hair soaking her clothing and any furniture around her, but she seemed to love it enough to keep in well-maintained so no one questioned why it was so long.

No one, except the people who’d learned to use it against her. Several times she’d been restrained by someone lacing their fingers through the thick, long locks, pulling her back or throwing her into something just by having their grip on her hair. Once she’d nearly gotten it caught in a bicycle chain, which she’d noticed just before any damage could have been done, and that led her to refrain from riding bikes unless she could pull her hair high up and out of harm’s way. Vehicles were troublesome, her frequently getting the bottom portion of her hair stuck in the door or window as it closed, and she’d been wary of elevators and automatically-closing doors for the same reason. Even escalators could cause problems, and she had to hold her hair up just to keep it from being sucked into the mechanism.

But Maki’s hair seemed to define her, more than her snarky responses or deadly glares, and she had accepted that fact for so long that Kaito couldn’t imagine her any other way. So when she came home from a briefing about an assassin job she was being assigned, walked right into their kitchen, and grabbed the biggest butcher knife they had, he’d initially thought she was going to use the cookware as part of her work before she told him, “I’m cutting my hair, don’t stop me.”

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, unable to hide the complete surprise in his voice at how sudden the statement had been. “What’s gotten into ya, Maki Roll? I thought you loved your hair!”

“It’s time for a change.” That was the reply he got, brief and brash, before she went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, leaving him confused on the outside. Whenever he banged on the door she’d yell at him to stop, reminding him that she had a knife and that she _could_ kill him if he so wanted, but he was desperate to get inside and know what was going on. Several minutes later and the door unlocked, but she left it for him to open himself if he so chose.

Naturally, he chose to do it immediately, and he opened it to see strands of hair nearly two meters long piled up on the floor, her making quick work of shearing half of her hair to above her shoulders. “I can’t believe this,” he said, squeezing his way inside and feeling the hair on the ground tickling the exposed parts of his legs between his pants and slippers. “I never thought I’d see you cutting your hair!”

“I have to be honest, it was needed a long time ago. Years, maybe?” she confessed, as she grabbed another portion of her hair and began sawing at it with the knife. “I just didn’t know what to do about it, so I kept it long like it always was. Today I finally decided that enough was enough so…there it goes.” With the three words more of the hair fell to the ground, and she smiled at her changed reflection in the mirror, seeing Kaito’s dropped jaw behind her. “Come on, it’s not the end of the world if I give myself a haircut.”

“Sure it’s not, but aren’t ya gonna miss it? If my hair was as long as yours, I would never wanna get rid of it because I’d always be wondering where it was!” Instinctively Kaito reached to his own hair, which he hadn’t styled that day and was laying flat and unkempt against his head. “Like…how could ya do this to yourself?”

“Easily,” she replied, slicing off another section of hair with relative ease. “I’ve cut ropes before, figured hair wouldn’t be too much different than that. And it’s not, I’m not having any trouble doing this at all.”

He could feel himself growing sick at the sight of her getting rid of such long and lovely hair, but he couldn’t let her know that he wasn’t sure how to take what was happening right before his eyes. “Wouldn’t it have been nicer if you had a professional do it? I bet one of our friends would’ve known someone who could do it for you.”

“And pay all that extra money? Thanks, but no thanks. This is free, and, honestly? It’s freeing. I’m not going to be trapped by my hair anymore, and that’s going to be a real relief.” Cutting a bit more, Maki ended up putting the knife down and turning around to face Kaito when she saw his expression was not changing even with her reassurances and explanations. “Look, if you’re going to be this negative about things, why don’t you let me finish and then you can see why this is a good change for me? If you’re in here acting like I’m ruining my life, I’m going to screw up and then you’ll be to blame for it.”

He clenched his mouth closed tightly and shook his head, letting her know he didn’t want to leave but also that he wouldn’t say anything else on the matter. She sighed and muttered a few grievances under her breath before getting back to work, and soon enough she’d chopped away all of the hair rather evenly, exposing her neck without needing to have pulled away a small forest worth of hair to do so. There was some clean-up work she had to do, which she grabbed a pair of small scissors for, but when all was said and done she’d spent just over an hour giving herself the haircut of a lifetime, and she seemed to be at absolute peace about it.

Kaito, on the other hand, was nowhere near as peaceful as she was seeing the stark difference in her reflection, but seeing her look so happy made him feel a little better about things. “So, uh, are you gonna let it grow back out?” he asked, while she was bouncing the trimmed edges and playing with the new length. “Or is this how it’s always gonna be?”

“Haven’t decided yet, I just made this choice so I need to try it out for a while.” Twirling part of her hair with her finger, once again Maki looked at him, this time with a serious expression on her face. “What do you really think about it, now that it’s done? Be honest with me, Kaito, I’m not playing around.”

“I, uh…” he stammered, feeling his face heat up now that he was looking at her head-on. The new haircut framed her jaw perfectly, and being able to see her shoulders without hair being around them made her look so much smaller than she ever had before. She was a tiny, perfect girlfriend in his eyes, but confessing that to her after how he’d been so negative about the haircut in the first place seemed wrong. “I’m gonna need some time to get used to it, but if you’re happy about it, I’m definitely happy about it too. It looks good on ya, Maki Roll, even if it’s weird seein’ it.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d say about as much.” She laughed, and her laugh made him laugh as well. “My head feels so much lighter without all of that extra hair on it, it’s crazy that I’d kept it so long for, well, so long.” Her eyes drifted towards the piles of the hair that she’d chopped off, growing wide when she saw how much there was. After she’d bent down and grabbed a strand, she pulled it so that she was holding one end in each hand and had it fully extended between them. “Look at this, Kaito, look at how…much there was!”

“Almost as long as you’re tall, yeah.”

A realization dawned on Maki as she held the hair in her hands, looking around at all that surrounded them. “And we have to clean this all up ourselves. I didn’t think about that before I did this. I was more worked up about getting it done and figuring out how my confession to everyone who loved my hair was going to be that I hated it that I completely forgot the hair’s got to go somewhere.”

“Guess there’s no time like now to take out the rest of your bad feelings towards it,” he pointed out, watching her easily break the strand in her hands in half with a swift pull. “I’ll get some bags and we’ll get right to work.” As he slid out of the bathroom Kaito felt himself get overly excited about the idea that he now had a short-haired girlfriend instead of a long-haired one, and that she looked both much cuter and much more capable of murder with the sharp hairstyle.


	2. To Desire What's Above

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day One, Prompt Two: Yearning

The concept of yearning was one that Maki found herself intimately familiar with, whether she liked to admit to it or not. She’d always yearned for a better life as a child, knowing that growing up in an orphanage where she was expected to kill to let everyone else survive was not the standard way of living. As she’d gotten older and phased out of the orphanage’s grasp, she yearned to find somewhere that she belonged, a place that she’d never quite found before and was looking for day in and day out. And then, once she found the place she’d so desperately wanted, she thought her days of yearning for things just outside her grasp were past her and she grew complacent in her new life.

Although, it wasn’t hard to blame her for letting her guard down the moment she’d been introduced to Kaito’s grandparents as a former orphan with no family of her own, and the older couple told their grandson in plain terms that no matter what happened between the two of them, she was their granddaughter forever. That was a sense of belonging, a warm meal, and a pair of comforting presences, all things that she’d never had before, and it would have been foolish of anyone in her position to not accept that unconditional love and care with open arms. Kaito had laughed and assured them that she’d stay in their lives for the rest of his, and that felt solid enough that she refused to believe there was any alternative.

But there _was_ an alternative, and it came while she was sitting on their living room floor, the smell of fabrics and cloths and old cigars strong in the air around her, her eyes glued to the television screen they had up on their wall. They’d been amazing about letting their grandson and his friend-turned-girlfriend stay with them as often as they’d wanted, and when the title that Maki wore went from _girlfriend_ to _wife_ she had expected that offer to be rescinded; instead they’d said that they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, or if the situation required, as long as they needed. The home her and Kaito had made for themselves wasn’t too far down the road, so even on family nights where they came over and dined and spent quality time together the offer usually went unused, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been home at that point. She was intimately familiar with the scents of the older couple’s home, used to their daily habits and the way they walked in and out of the rooms whenever they came up with some other chore to do, and she spent her time there watching that television screen for any signs of spacecraft.

The stream had been set up months before, Kaito making sure that it was set to the right channel and that it wasn’t going to encounter any sort of interference with its signal. “If it goes down, you’ve just gotta wait for it to come back on,” he’d told Maki after the screen had lit up for the first time with the view of the sky. “They’ll bring it back, there’s no reason for them not to.”

“And what if they don’t?” she asked, not wanting to be a problem but knowing that she’d kick herself if she didn’t have all the answers she was looking for. “What if something big happened and they don’t bring it back? What if I—“

“Calm down, Maki Roll. They’ll always bring it back. You’ll get to see it around the world, day and night, and every time something comes across the sky you’ve just gotta think of me, okay?” He grinned, and the happiness radiating off of him made her pout feel like it had so much more power behind it. How _dare_ he be so happy when she was feeling like she was about to break? “Promise me you’ll do it, I won’t leave until you’ve promised.”

“So if I don’t promise you won’t leave, is that what you’re saying?” Her way of interpreting what he had said resulted in a moment of sputters before he told her he’d have to leave anyway, and she reluctantly gave him the promise he’d been looking for. She knew that he meant well by setting up the stream for her, and that he wasn’t intending on hurting her by leaving like he was, but there was so much to the situation that Kaito couldn’t understand that was going to eat her alive.

She sat there on the floor as long as she could most days, moving around on occasion and taking her meals with the grandparents at their table, and she’d always make sure that she’d turned it off for the night after some sort of satellite-esque object crossed through the frame. Being an astronaut’s wife was hard work, but she knew she wasn’t the only one in that position, seeing as the others up on the space station had to have families back on Earth that cared about them. Maki was sure that the yearning she felt every time she thought the spacecraft was in view was a normal feeling that everyone in her shoes was feeling, but at the same time she couldn’t be fully convinced that she wasn’t yearning for Kaito more than anyone else was yearning for their loved one.

Her heart ached whenever she didn’t have a clue where he was, and whenever she knew for just a moment that he was still up in space, still safely floating around in a metal contraption built by man that could fail at any moment, her heart panged for his safe return. She’d never really known how much she loved and adored that man until he’d left her like he had, and now without any real way of communicating with him she was left watching the stream, waiting for the call that he was going to be coming back down to the ground to be with her once again. His grandparents would talk to her, ask her if she was okay or if she wanted company, but she didn’t know any way to tell them what her feelings were without seeming selfish or rude towards everyone else in the same situation, who might not have had even half as much as she did at the time. They’d occasionally sit with her and watch, telling stories about how ambitious Kaito had been in his youth and how he’d always dreamed about orbiting the planet and exploring the universe, and with every tale she heard Maki found herself yearning more and more for his return.

His desire to explore the universe was fine, it was perfectly acceptable, but if he was going to do it then it needed to be with her at his side, or with her dead in the ground so that she didn’t feel so lost without him there beside her. It was beyond strange feeling so strongly about him that those were the only two options she’d accept, but Maki had spent so much of her life looking for the relationship she had with him that she wasn’t going to let a second of it go to waste. (Of course, she _was_ realistic and knew that she’d have to settle for watching him from the ground while he was gallivanting around the universe, but she liked to think he’d see things from her perspective sometime.)

When the day of his return came, she could barely keep herself together until he was squarely in her sights, not some foreign image of a space station but the man she’d loved and chosen to marry, his hair resuming its daily fight against the gravity he’d been without. The way he waved at her to let her know he saw her made her melt inside, and she had to resist charging through taped-off areas to get back to being with him. All of the yearning she’d felt while he was in space didn’t compare even slightly to the yearning she felt in that moment, knowing he was so close but not close enough to touch.

Their first embrace when they were able to do so was violent, her nearly tackling him down with how much energy and affection she had to show him. “Glad to see ya missed me, Maki Roll,” he told her, the sound of his voice much like music to her ears. “It’s been a while, and it’s good to be back with ya.”

“Next time you leave me, you better have a damn good reason for it,” she jokingly replied, losing her battle with her emotions and bursting into tears as she buried herself in his chest, feeling his heart beating underneath her forehead. “I’m not doing this again, Kaito, I love you too much to let you go like that!”

He laughed, knowing that she couldn’t actually be serious about not wanting to do it again, because of all the work and effort he’d put in to become an astronaut actually able to go up into space. “I’ll see what I can do to help get you through another few months of me being on the space station. Kinda figured bein’ with my grandparents would’ve been enough.”

Taking a deep breath so that she could deliver her thoughts on the statement without sounding like she was in the middle of crying, Maki said, “Nothing could _ever_ be enough to replace you.” And when she said that, she knew without a doubt that she meant it, that no matter what she had with her she wouldn’t stop yearning for him when he was gone, and she figured that he’d find it impossible to go through on his word.

Yet…several years later when he was sent on another space flight, she got to spend the time watching the space station stream on her own television, sitting in her own living room, with his grandparents stopping by to check on things every so often. Her whole body still yearned for Kaito while he was gone, certainly, but having his grandparents there to make sure her and their two children were okay did help matters, not to mention having those two Kaito-like faces staring at her every day, reminding her of their love and that he was going to make it back home to them.


	3. Friendly Competition at the Weight Bars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Two, Prompt One: Workout

Maki came out of the changing room having just finished tying her impossibly long hair up out of the way, always fearing the worst if it were able to get caught in any of the machinery at the gym. She typically stuck to using the free weights, which held no risk of hair causing injury, but there were some times where she wanted to use some of the other equipment and needed to be careful. Her hands were wrapped in braces to keep her wrists steady when she started lifting, and as she walked towards her preferred station she stretched her arms in front of her to make sure they were limber and ready to go.

She was met at the weights by a man she’d never seen at the gym before, but someone that she always found herself running into elsewhere outside in the world. “Just what do you think you’re doing here?” she asked, grabbing a couple of the weights to move them over to the bench she always worked at. “Last time I checked, you said you don’t work out.”

“Aw, come on, I only said that one time,” Kaito replied, an indignant tone to his voice. “You were tryin’ to challenge me to a race and I said that wasn’t my style, I didn’t mention anything about weights, did I?” Maki raised her eyebrows in suspicion at him, before shaking her head and deciding to just ignore him. If the guy she frequently ran into while she was out doing her daily routine was going to intrude on this other part of her life, that wasn’t anything she needed to worry herself about. “Besides, you never said you were a gym rat, never would’ve thought you’d be one. Didn’t seem like your style.”

Putting the weights evenly on the bar so that she could get right to work, Maki knew that she could have taken offense to that statement but chose to not dignify it with a response. Her actually putting in the work would be more than enough to get him to realize the error of his ways, and she didn’t need to waste her time explaining to him that she’d been going to the gym in one form or another since she was young. Working out was a release for her, after having to deal with all of the nonsense she encountered volunteering at the orphanage and hunting down criminals for meager pay, and she wasn’t going to let one man ruin things for her. She grabbed the bar and attempted to lift it, but just as she got a solid grip on it Kaito told her to be careful and the one act of kindness was enough to throw her off. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, I don’t need your warnings.”

“Whoa there, I was just trying to be friendly. What’s got you so crabby, you usually aren’t anything like this when I see you at the store!” His weight bar looked so pitiful compared to hers, and she wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t get far lifting tiny amounts, especially when his day job was stocking shelves at the local grocery store, but she held her tongue and tried to lift her bar again. He watched on as she got it up off the ground and into the air over her head, dropping it after a few moments. “That looked pretty intense, but I bet I can do better than that.”

“Can you now?” It wasn’t like she wanted to see him struggle or anything, but the thought of watching him fail to one-up her was amusing. “I’d love to see it happen.”

“Well, I mean, lifting boxes at work builds a lot of muscle, I’m super built even if you don’t think I am.” He laughed, toeing the weights he’d chosen. “Lemme get some warmups in, then we’ll make this a challenge. How much you wanna bet on this? I’m not exactly gonna show off to you if I’m not getting something out of it.”

She snorted, watching Kaito squirm with every second she took to answer. “What, the pride of beating me won’t be good enough?”

“T-that’s not it, I just wanna know what I’m working for.”

All things considered, Kaito seemed like a nice guy, always willing to help her find things when she was doing the shopping for the orphanage owners, and he never once complained when her questions took him away from doing his job. “How about…if you can’t beat me, which you won’t be able to, we go out on a date.”

“That was what I was gonna say for if I can beat you, but sounds good. If I can beat you, though, you owe me money…hm, how about you owe me an equal amount to how much I lift when I beat you?” The terms seemed fair enough, and so after shaking on it they got to their own weight lifting, one in preparation for making good on his challenge and the other seeing how much she could put him through in order to beat her. She got up to her maximum lifting weight—eighty kilograms—rather easily, whereas she could look over and see that he was struggling with just over half of that, and she began to realize the trap she’d just set for herself. There was no way he was going to lift more than she could, and if he didn’t then she’d have to go out on a date with him, and there was _no way_ she could bring herself to actually do that.

“Watch out!” Kaito yelled, and Maki realized she’d started thinking about their bet while she was holding weights, having nearly dropped them on her foot but him noticing what was happening had stopped disaster from striking just in time. “Geez, you’re a mess today. What, you thinking about how you’ve got to pay up here soon?”

“Oh, you know it,” she lied, setting the weights down before taking a seat on the mat, looking at him with amusement in her eyes. “So, when are you going to take this seriously? You talked a big game, now you need to own up to your own challenge. Unless, of course, you weren’t ever being serious about things.”

He sputtered, looking between her bar and his own. “I was taking it seriously, but then you went and showed me up like that. How much weight do you even have on that thing?”

“Eighty. Pretty standard lifting for me.”

“Let me try it, I’m sure I can do it too.” She shrugged and swapped spots with Kaito, so that he could grab her bar for himself. It came up off the ground, but barely passed his knees before he was setting it back down, and she laughed. “H-hey wait, I can do it, I’m just…warming up still! Can’t overwork my muscles!”

“You’re not fooling me, Kaito,” she said, standing up and weaseling her way in between him and the bar, putting her hands next to his. “Here, I’ll play the role of the coach and help you lift this, since you clearly can’t do it yourself, and then we can talk about where we’re going to go on the date I owe you for being so weak.”

Lifting the bar with his help was a lot easier than she expected, to the point that Maki was beginning to suspect she really had been duped in the whole scenario. She was so much shorter than Kaito that it getting to the point that it was over her head still gave him lots of room to go, and even though she shouldn’t have, she decided that she was going to test him and his talk, letting go of the bar while it was above her. At once she knew that it was a mistake and that she was going to hurt someone by trying to make him own up to bragging about something he shouldn’t have, but she couldn’t grab the bar fast enough to keep it from falling down with a loud thud, taking them both over with it.

It was mortifying having all of the people in the gym hear the commotion and come look to see what had happened, finding Maki and Kaito partially intertwined over a weight bar, but at least neither of them had gotten physically hurt. There were sore muscles and even sorer egos to nurse over the coming days, but the only lasting damage the incident had caused was the hole in Maki’s wallet taking Kaito out on a date had created. Had she known that he’d want to go all out for the occasion, because it had finally given him the chance to know her better like he’d always wanted, she might have thought twice about making that her offer in a bet she was set up to lose either way.


	4. Sugar Coated Struggle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Two, Prompt Two: Sweets

There was something about heading home after a late night of studying that made Kaito’s heart feel satisfied with things around him. Usually, whenever he had to go on-campus for classes, he would make sure that he’d be there until they were locking the doors to the buildings for the night, using the silent library and the attached study nook to his advantage. He’d been working on star charts that covered entire tabletops, and it was much easier to get those out and added to if he was the only person using the room, and the windows up in the annex were able to be pushed open so that telescopes could make their way out, so really it was a perfect place for him to do his studying. He was going to _ace_ his last round of classes before getting his degree, and then he’d be off to working with spaceships and charting expeditions, not just where the stars were.

He was most of the way back to his apartment when he heard his phone buzz in the seat next to him, and he cringed, knowing that anyone who would be trying to message him at that late hour really needed something from him. Even with how empty the streets were, it was still illegal to be on his phone while driving, so he pulled off into an abandoned parking lot and grabbed his phone to check it. All that was there was a single unread message, but given that it was from Maki he knew that replying to it quickly was best.

 _stop by the store & get me something sweet_, the message said, no further explanations or clarifications attached. He nodded after reading, even though no one was around to see him do so, and shot her a reply saying that he’d do that for her, before realizing that it was so late that just about everywhere would be closed. She was setting him up for failure, trying to make him look like a horrible boyfriend even though he wanted to do what she asked of him, and so he had to get creative.

It might have nearly been eleven o’clock that night, but Kaito was going to go out of his way to please his girlfriend and fill her one simple request, even if it meant stopping by some seedy convenience store he wouldn’t step inside even in broad daylight. There were other cars parked outside of the building when he drove up, a few blocks in the wrong direction from his apartment, and he knew if trouble befell him he could always call for Maki to come bail him out. After getting out of his car, Kaito immediately got distracted by a bright star up in the sky above, and after mentally figuring out what it was, where it was located, and recalling that he’d already put it in place on his chart, he looked around to see that, aside from the lights of the store, the area he was in was rather dark.

“Well, time to make this quick,” he told himself, making sure his car was locked before walking inside the store. There were a few people milling around inside, all of which seemed to be minding their own business, and he went straight to the candy aisle, which was thankfully empty of other bodies. The selection was vast, and he considered sending a text asking Maki what she wanted in specific, but waiting for her to reply would’ve meant spending more time in the store than he wanted to. To be on the safe side, he grabbed one of anything that looked even remotely appealing, realizing too quickly that he wasn’t going to have enough arm space to hold everything.

He was a grad student and he didn’t have the common sense to limit his selections to what he already knew his girlfriend liked, because his mind was so flooded with the desire to make her happy at any cost. So, instead of putting anything back, he just piled it tightly in his arm and hoped for the best. With every step towards the counter he could feel many of the treats shifting, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, especially when he got up to the front and saw that there were bags of galaxy-themed gummy sweets there. “I’m getting all of this,” he told the cashier as he dropped the massive pile out of his grasp, only to grab several bags of the gummies and pile them on top. “It’s mostly for my girlfriend, but some of it’s for me.”

“One of you must be a big eater,” the cashier replied in a deadpan voice, beginning the arduous process of ringing everything up. Kaito awkwardly laughed, knowing that neither him or Maki really did eat much outside of their normal meals, but if she was asking for sweets then something had to be up. The exchange went smoothly, even if it was silent for the most part, and after paying and having everything bagged up, he was ready to head out and get home to the love of his life.

Someone else in the store had other ideas, though, based on the yelling that broke out near the alcohol cooler in the back corner. He thought he’d be able to get out without any issue, but as he made his way towards the door something came flying through the store and shattered one of the glass windows, spooking him and making him nearly jump through another window just to get away from it. The situation was escalating and had nothing to do with him, but when he got back to his car and was safely inside of it, he couldn’t leave the parking lot due to the police that had been called at the first yell, their cars blocking everyone in their spots.

 _I’ll be late, big problem @the store_ , he sent to Maki, looking at the time on his phone. Just after eleven, he hadn’t been in there too long and she would still be awake for a while when he got home. She sent him a thumbs-up emoticon as a reply and he could feel the judgmental tone it carried with it, and he wanted to explain that the problem had nothing to do with him but felt that it could be explained later.

Kaito ended up sitting there in his car for a long while, as the situation inside the store was handled by the authorities. His lights were on and he was listening to an audiobook about the exploration of the planets as he waited to know he could leave, and every time he saw a cop leave the building he wondered if they were going to come talk to him, or better, if they were going to move their car. He was still there when the clock struck midnight, then twelve thirty, and even one o’clock, and he knew that Maki was definitely growing impatient with him but there was nothing he could do to get out of where he was.

Finally, as his eyelids started to grow heavy and the interesting content of his book was beginning to lose him, the parking lot cleared of police cars and he was able to be on his way. It took just a few minutes to get to his spot outside of his building, the light in his and Maki’s room on and visible from where he was, and after grabbing the bags of candy he was on his way up the outdoor flights of stairs to their front door. “It’s about damn time you get back,” she said, opening the door for him after seeing him coming up the stairs. “What took you so long? Some girl offer you a good time in exchange for watching the stars with you?”

“Nah, Maki Roll, you wouldn’t believe what actually happened to me,” he replied, setting the bags down on their small kitchen table after he’d entered and she’d closed the door. “But before we get into that, what’s the occasion? You’re never one to ask for candy.”’

“Oh, I, uh…” Her face was heating up as he looked at her, curious for what her answer was. She was clearly dressed for bed, wearing one of his shirts that was oversized on her, and he could see her shorts peeking out underneath it, but when he noticed that she had a microwavable heating pad in her hand he knew what the reason was and felt bad for asking about it. “It’s nothing. Ask me about it again, and I’ll kill you. How about that?”

He grabbed all of the candy he’d specifically bought for himself and nodded, not wanting to step on her toes when she was in such a state. “Sounds good. You can have whatever you want out of all of this, I got it all for you. Guy at the store said one of us is a big eater, but he’s never met us so he wouldn’t know this isn’t usual, y’know?”

“It happens every month, Kaito. You just usually aren’t the one I ask to buy me the candy, since normally I can do it myself.” Grabbing a single candy bar out of the pile and opening it, Maki took a single bite out of it before her face scrunched and she gagged. “Ew, this is absolutely disgusting. Why’d you buy this?”

“I didn’t know what you wanted, so I went a…bit overboard. I’m sorry you don’t like it, do you want me to eat it so it doesn’t go to waste?”

He thought he was being a valiant and caring boyfriend by making that offer, but seeing the look of determination in Maki’s tired eyes as she shook her head and took another bite of the candy bar made him remember why he loved her so much. Sweets were sweets, and for someone who just needed the chocolate pick-me-up, even the nastiest of candy bars could be a godsend.


	5. Love in Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Three, Prompt One: Garden

When they’d bought their house, paid for with the money they’d saved up for a while and the promise that they’d maintain steady jobs to pay monthly for close to the rest of their lives, the first thing Kaito did after signing his life away to the debt was go out into the shabby backyard, stepping just outside the door onto a cement patio, and point towards a barren area of the yard. “That’s where I’m gonna grow it,” he said, shaking his finger in the direction of the dirt. “The garden of my dreams. You’ll see it happen, Maki Roll, I promise ya it’s gonna.”

She was amused at his determination, but there were so many other things going on in her mind at the moment—like how they’d managed to progress from a courthouse wedding to buying a house—that she didn’t know how much she wanted to believe him. “Sure thing, but can we focus more on the inside of this place first?”

“Well, of course, but once we’ve got everything settled that’s where the garden’s going.” He was fired up and there was nothing that was going to distract him from the thought of growing the garden. Together they made quick work of cleaning their new home, redoing the rooms they felt needed to be painted and have new flooring put in, and then furnishing the house to their liking. The colors on the walls went from being plain and boring to vibrant, covered in purples and reds and stars that hadn’t existed before, and their furniture matched the overall vibe they were going for with the place, and it was so much better than anywhere either of them had lived before.

Once things were set up and organized in a way to their liking, Kaito began planning out the garden he hadn’t really shut up about in all of their decorating. He went and bought a bunch of stones and a strong shovel, and he spent days on end out in the backyard, moving dirt and laying stones to frame the garden space, Maki watching him with amusement from inside the house. She would have been more willing to help him, had she known why he was so insistent on getting things done so quickly. When he had the plot set up she approached him with a new gripe about the home, trying to move him away from the unnecessary garden work to do something else that she felt was more needed. “Why don’t we get rid of the concrete and make something nicer out there, since I’m sure you’re planning on spending more time outside than inside.”

“I’ll get there eventually,” he told her, pressing his lips against her forehead and trying not to let his sweat touch her face. “It’s on the list of things to do, but the garden’s gotta come first.”

Rolling her eyes, Maki pulled back from him and looked at how red-faced he was, tired from the exertion he was putting himself through to make his garden happen. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she replied, smiling at him warmly as he came fully inside, his legs covered in dirt and his upper body drenched in sweat. “For now, though, you’ve _got_ to take a shower, you look and smell disgusting.”

“All in a day’s work, Maki Roll!” The days of being able to frantically work on his envisioned garden were few, and once they were used and he’d just barely gotten the mulch down for his plants to grow, he was back at his day job, leaving the gardening for the weekends and for after he’d get home from the office. He spent a lot of time out in the garden, planting seeds in perfect rows and waiting for them to sprout, and Maki almost felt like he loved what he’d created more than he loved her.

There had to be some reason why he was so fixated on getting the plants in order, and as much as she wanted to find out what it was she was sure that asking him about it would end in an explanation akin to whenever she asked him about outer space. Kaito seemed to be happier than he’d ever been as long as she’d known him, but she didn’t know why and she wasn’t sure she’d ever know.

The first time he had a plant bust through the soil he came running into the house, nearly scaring Maki into an attack position at his sudden outburst. “They’re starting to grow!” he sobbed, tears actively streaming down his cheeks at how overwhelmed with emotion the plants had made him. “I actually did it, I managed to grow my own garden!”

“One plant sprouting isn’t exactly worthy of claiming you grew your own garden,” she pointed out, letting herself sigh when she realized he wasn’t meaning any harm with his emotions. “Once you have things actually blooming, then I’ll consider it a success. In the meantime…” Her eyes looked towards the back door, where the dingy patio was barely visible. “When are you going to get around to fixing that?”

“I guess now that my babies don’t need me,” he sniffled, “I can start figuring the deck out. Maybe by the time it’s done, I’ll have flowers to look out over!” The money for the replacement patio was harder to come by, because he hadn’t been setting anything aside for anything other than the garden work, so they were forced to make some adjustments to their lifestyles in order to fund the project. Just when Maki thought it was getting to be rather expensive, the reason for that being so became clear—Kaito might have been fine with digging the garden himself, but the deck he wanted to bring in professionals for. That did mean that work was able to be done while they were both off at their jobs or running errands, so it didn’t take as long to come to completion, but the end result felt like the last piece that their home really needed to be theirs.

Kaito spent many hours out on the deck, spraying his growing garden with the hose whenever he thought the plants needed watering. Maki would come out with him on occasion, wrapping herself around him and taking in his warm scent as he worked, slowly finding pride in his passion. Now that he wasn’t having to do as much hard work they were able to spend more time together, and once they had furniture out on their deck they were able to lounge there together, taking in the sight of the life in the garden before retiring inside for the night.

In just a few months the backyard had transformed from being barren to being somewhat lively, the rest of the yard still dead and brown aside from the garden itself, with its stone walls and growing plants. “I’ll think about doing more of the yard in the future,” Kaito said one day, walking around in the dirt and watching it kick up with every step. “Maybe some more garden next year? What do ya think about that, Maki Roll? Next year I could do a vegetable garden, to go with our flowers, and then we’d be growin’ our own food!”

“I don’t think we’d be able to grow everything we need, but some home-grown vegetables wouldn’t be looked down upon.” She pressed a finger to her lips as she watched him walk around, finding a spot on the other side of the yard and marking it out with his feet to give a rough estimate of where he wanted the garden. “Depending on how fast you make it happen, we might be able to make some real use of it.”

“I know I said next year, but I guess I could at least start getting it built now, then I can put grass and trees and all that in the rest of the yard, so it’ll all be ready to go when we need it.” Looking at her, he saw how pensive she seemed but chose not to question it, taking her silence as an acceptance of what he’d just suggested. “Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do! I’ve got extra stones, I can at least get a little work done before I do anything else out here.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” she finally said after watching him come back to the deck, kicking the dirt off of his shoes before coming up to keep things from getting too dirty around them. “Honestly I’m surprised you’re this committed to this, I never would’ve thought that you’d still be doing this for this long.”

He shrugged, heading for the door and opening it for himself and Maki to both enter. “I mean, I’ve always wanted a garden of my own, but we got this house with this killer yard space that was just…nothing. I want to have somethin’ nice to spend time with you in, and for us to spend time with our future kids someday…if we ever decide to do that…”

Flustered that he’d suggest such a thing, Maki considered dragging her feet and not going inside with him on that note, but she ultimately allowed herself to enter in front of him, choosing to not even address what he’d said. He apologized later that night, for being so forward about things and not really thinking through what he was saying before saying it, and she tried to believe him, but she knew deep down that he was merely saying things to cover his bases. “I have no problem with you wanting to have children, Kaito,” she said after hearing his apologies, “but I do have a problem with you trying to justify working on your gardens with that. Can’t you just want to grow nice things?”

“I could, and I do, I really do! I just also wanna have it growing for other reasons that I probably should’ve just kept to myself.” He sounded hurt, his ego wounded at the fact that she wasn’t fully down for his plans, and she didn’t want to exert the energy to keep arguing with him that everything about his formerly-passion project was silly. They went to bed that night displeased with each other and how they handled things, and for the next several days they made sure to keep their distance from the other, just to make sure they didn’t step on any more toes.

Their little argument healed itself after Kaito came inside one day after work with a single, tiny lily bloom in his hand, which he offered to Maki by way of tucking it amongst her bangs behind her ear. “First flower in the garden, and it’s for you,” he told her, stepping away just in case she wanted to lash out. “Thought it was kinda pretty, it kinda looks like a star, but I thought you’d appreciate having it.”

“You gave up the first flower…for me?” she asked, almost in disbelief as he firmly nodded. “Well, color me impressed. I would’ve guessed you’d keep every flower in that garden alive for as long as you could, not cutting them up just because you wanted to give them to me.”

“I-it’s not gonna be a regular thing!”

She cracked a smile at how embarrassed he was that she would even suggest something so radical. “Calm down, I figured it wasn’t going to be. Thanks, though, I appreciate it. There are more coming soon, right?”

“Should be, most of ‘em look like they’ll be blooming any day now. There’s a couple plants that’ll wait until fall to blossom, but that’s fine, we’ll have nice flowers up until the first frost.” He seemed so proud of himself and what he’d accomplished, his cheeks rosy from his shame and from his pride, and she felt herself slipping into a state of being unable to resist his handsome and rugged appearance, his tanned skin with the occasional, usually-hidden patch of freckles for her to admire. This was the man she’d decided she was going to marry and love forever, and she’d never really loved him as much before she loved him in that moment, after he’d given up something he’d worked so hard for to make her happy.

Perhaps his idea of them having children around to enjoy the gardens with them wasn’t _as_ bad as she’d initially thought it was after all. And so, when the fall flowers were busting open and he was excitedly tending to them, making sure they were going to last the season, she came to him and said, in the plainest way that she could, that she’d be open to them being able to watch something _else_ grow before they had more flowers to take care of. He gave her an awkward chuckle and asked if she was being serious, and the way she stared at him, hands on her hips, and asked him if he wanted to die made it plenty clear she was serious.

That winter, as he prepared for the next year’s growing season of both flowers and vegetables alike, and mentally got himself ready for starting a couple tree sprouts and a full yard of grass, he also had to get into the mindset that by the time the summer blooms were in full force, they’d have something else to be focusing their attention on. Even though she didn’t like that he still gave the gardens more attention that her most of the time, Maki found herself paying closer attention to what he was planning on growing, considering all possibilities for what the first flower the child _she_ was growing got to pose with would be.


	6. Maki's Precious Pet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Three, Prompt Two: Animals

Every night when Maki slunk back into the home she and Kaito had made for themselves, she was greeted not with the sight of her boyfriend and favorite person, but with the small cage that sat just down the hall from the front door. At the sound of the door opening, the creature inside the cage would begin to stir, and by the time Maki had locked up, taken off her shoes and tossed aside everything else she carried with her for work, there were sounds of scratching coming from the cage. “Yes, yes, I know you missed me,” she’d call towards the animal that was desperately waiting for her to come release it, and she would crouch down in front of the cage to open the door.

Hopping out with ease was a long-haired, soft brown rabbit that would binky around and flop on Maki’s feet, looking up at her with one dark eye that she couldn’t tell the difference between iris and pupil in. “You’re such a spoiled rabbit,” she’d tease, pulling a foot away to use it to gently tickle underneath the rabbit’s chin. “I don’t think anyone else would take this much care of you, Bunbun.”

As the creature she was speaking to was a rabbit, she didn’t get much of a response, but when she got both of her feet free of the rabbit’s fur and started heading for the bedroom, Bunbun would follow her, oftentimes zooming ahead of her and flopping against the door. She’d laugh as she let her pet inside, watching as Bunbun ran straight to the cage that was set up in there and climbed in, getting settled amongst the bedding in the bottom of it while she closed the cage’s door tightly. That was when she’d strip down to nothing and change into her pajamas, crawling into bed next to the fast-asleep Kaito who didn’t know a thing about her nightly routine with her pet rabbit.

What he did, know, was that she loved that bunny almost as much as she loved him, and he was frequently having to watch her take care of the rabbit before she would do anything else. “C’mon, Maki Roll, it’s not gonna kill him if his dinner doesn’t come at the right time,” he said on one of her nights off, while she was setting up Bunbun’s dinner of hay and fresh vegetables in a bowl right near where the humans were going to be eating. “You’re makin’ me starve waiting for him to have some gourmet dining!”

“Rabbits need company, Kaito, and since he’s here alone I’m the only company he gets. I’m not neglecting him just because someone with working legs _and_ thumbs refuses to make his own meal sometimes.” Dropping the last bits of what she’d prepared into the bowl and watching as her furry friend began chewing away on his hay, Maki looked at Kaito and saw gears turning inside of his mind. “What, you thinking about how you’re going to cook yourself something tonight? Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I have to do it for you.”

“But it tastes better when you cook it,” he pointed out, “and I have to make myself a lot of dinners when you have early nights on the job. Sometimes it’s just nice to have someone else do the cooking.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that Bunbun needs to be fed too. But now that I’m done with him, I’ll get started on our meal, I guess.” There was resentment in Maki’s voice, but she didn’t mean anything by it, as it was a regular argument they had about her taking extra-good care of Bunbun. Kaito just didn’t understand how someone could love their pet rabbit so much, and she wasn’t going to waste her breath explaining the multitude of reason why she cherished the little guy.

Except, as she found out, he _did_ understand her love, and he wanted to help out with things however he could. That was his reasoning for surprising her with a rescue rabbit for her birthday, another long-haired bunny that was incredibly skittish and shaking as he presented it to her. “I…don’t think I asked for this,” she bluntly stated, looking at the poor creature she’d been given. “I mean, I’ll take care of them, but I was perfectly fine being Bunbun’s companion, we had things down to a science.”

“The lady at the shelter said it’s best for rabbits to be in pairs, and when I mentioned that Bunbun was a he, she gave me this li’l guy and said he’d be a perfect friend for him.” Kaito was grinning as he watched Maki adjust how she was holding the smaller, darker rabbit before choosing to set him down and letting him dart behind a bookshelf. “She also mentioned he’s gonna need some extra love, and I thought that’d work great with you, since you love Bunbun so much already.”

“I’ll look into acclimating rabbits to each other, and thankfully I’ve already got two cages, but this is going to be a lot of work, Kaito. Do you realize what you’ve signed me up for?” He didn’t, because he hadn’t thought more about the present than the fact that Maki already had one rabbit, so a second shouldn’t have been a problem. “I’m just glad you made sure to get a second male, I don’t know what I’d do if we suddenly had a whole warren under our roof.”

“A whole…what?”

She stared blankly at him. “A warren. Family of rabbits. You know what happens when you have a male and a female together, don’t you?” He chuckled and reassured her that he did, he just hadn’t known what the term she used meant. “Oh, well, now you know, I guess. Does he have a name?”

“The cage said his name was Brownie. Didn’t think I’d want to change it without you knowing, so the papers still say Brownie on them, but it’s up to you.” Kaito’s grin had long disappeared, but hearing that Maki was at least warming up to the idea of having a second rabbit in the house was making it creep back onto his face. “I think the lady at the shelter really wanted him gone, she seemed super eager to give him to me.”

Having grown bored with the conversation and worried about her new pet, Maki was walking away and going to see where Brownie had gotten off to, so that she could show him his cage and begin getting the house ready for the bunny bonding that was needing to happen. “I’m sure it’s because rabbits aren’t a popular pet, and you walked right in asking for one instead of any other animal. She was probably over the moon about someone giving him a new home, honestly.”

He accepted that answer and went to go do something else, leaving Maki to fish out a rabbit from where he’d gotten himself wedged in his frantic attempt at hiding. As she carried him into the bedroom, passing Bunbun’s cage where the lighter rabbit was in the middle of a nap, she felt something strange about the creature in her hands, but she shook off her worries, thinking that neither Kaito nor someone at an animal shelter would lie about something. Once Brownie was in the former bedtime cage of Bunbun’s, Maki hopped up onto the bed and began looking into ways to make two male rabbits bond together, so that they could cohabitate without causing any issues. She found many resources that looked to be time-consuming, but when it came to her furry child (or children now, thanks to the gift), she had to do what was necessary no matter how long it took.

More cage pieces were purchased, claws were gently filed down, and soon the process of bonding the two was in full swing. Kaito would often find Maki in the bathroom with the two, part of the cage separating the bathtub with one rabbit on each side, looking like she was about to pull her hair out in frustration as they didn’t seem to be interested in each other. There were a couple spats between the rabbits (and their humans, Maki taking it _very_ personally when Kaito’s gift rabbit attacked Bunbun through the cage), but after weeks of spending almost every day doing some bonding activity, the day came where Bunbun and Brownie looked like they were able to get along.

It was a moment of truth when she pulled the cage away and let the two interact, and for a few seconds everything seemed to be perfectly fine, Brownie giving a binky while Bunbun hopped over him, but then—“Kaito, I thought you _said_ Brownie was a male rabbit!” Her scream was audible through the house, teeming with anger, and he rushed to see what was going on.

When he peeked into the bathroom she was staring down at the rabbits on top of each other in the bottom of the tub. “I…was told he was. Is he not?” he asked, coming inside to see what Maki was so angrily watching, and he visibly paled at the sight. “Oh geez, uh, maybe they’re both just guys who really love each other?”

“I told you I didn’t want to have a warren under this roof!” Maki was too shocked at what had transpired to take any action, but once the rabbits separated she was taking them back to their cages, not even speaking to Kaito while she worked. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been lied to about Brownie, he thought he was doing her a favor by bringing her home a second rabbit and instead he’d caused more of a headache than she’d ever wanted.

Just over a month later, four little lionhead babies were born in the bottom of Brownie’s cage, and even though she’d sworn up and down many times she didn’t want to have all those rabbits to take care of, one look at seeing her _grandbunnies_ and Maki’s heart was lost to them. Of course, she wasn’t going to allow their family of rabbits to grow any larger, so she had Brownie spayed and had the babies taken care of once they were old enough (she’d been told when she got Bunbun that he couldn’t go through the surgery, otherwise he would’ve been fixed long before there’d been a problem), and she happily spent her free time raising her little warren she’d never asked for. And Kaito, the accidental instigator of the whole situation, could only sit by and watch as she treated all six rabbits with the same love she’d treated Bunbun with to begin with, proving that her love of the animal had never been out of wanting him to feel like he had a companion, but out of her wanting to make sure he got to live his best life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both of my prompts for Day Three involve them each having a different obsession, which I think is pretty neato


	7. In Defense of One's Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Four, Prompt One: Blood

The blood dripping from Kaito’s face was coming from a nasty cut that zig-zagged across his forehead and sliced through his eyebrow, painting the entire right side of his face as he stumbled home as fast as his adrenaline-driven legs could carry him. He knew he’d screwed up in starting that physical encounter, but there were some things he felt were worth fighting for, and the honor of someone near and dear to his heart was up at the top of the list.

He made it back before the blood had gotten much further than staining the collar of his shirt and jacket both, tinging them shades darker with a stain that wouldn’t be released. At least he was _used_ to having blood stains on his clothing, even if the soiled articles had long since been discarded and he’d replaced them all with fresh items. His keys were thankfully still in his pocket, but he was so disoriented getting them out and putting them into the door that it had already been unlocked and opened before he got there. “What the hell happened to you?” Maki asked, the concern in her voice masked by the anger she spoke with. “I’m not letting you in until you tell me exactly what happened.”

“There was a bit of a fight,” he replied, trying his best not to slur his words as he realized that his mouth had gotten hit once or twice in the whole ordeal and his lips and tongue both felt strange. “Nothing too terrible, you should’ve seen the other guy when I was through with him! Now lemme in, I’ve gotta get cleaned up.”

“I’d say, you’re probably going to need stitches for that cut there.” Her eyes hadn’t left his eyebrow and forehead since she’d noticed they were the root of the problem, and she soon took on a commanding role as she told him what to do. “Go sit in the bathroom and wash that with some soap, I’ve got a stitch kit I can use to patch it up without needing to get you looked at.”

He blinked, feeling blood get into his eye and make it sting. “Why do you have a stitch kit handy? Shouldn’t you leave that to the professionals?”

Never one to answer questions that related to her backstory outright, Maki turned around and repeated her direction before disappearing into their home, heading for her work things to check for what she needed. Shrugging, Kaito came inside, closed the door and tried locking it before giving up on figuring out the deadbolt, and then went into the bathroom, turning the light on and seeing that the damage done to his face might have been a bit worse than he’d realized it was.

The bleeding cut looked black and bruised from how hard he’d been punched to bust his skin open, and the blood was showing no signs of drying anywhere where it was actively falling, although what had dripped onto his nose had already hardened. He was thankful that the assailant hadn’t decided to bash his nose in as well, deciding that enough damage had been done with the jaw blows and the ones to the forehead. “I know this is gonna hurt, but…I did it for the right reason,” he told himself as he turned the water on, letting it get lukewarm before picking up a washcloth and soaking it, using that to start wiping the blood away. The cut began to throb with an intensity Kaito could only describe through grunts and groans, but by the time he’d gotten it mostly cleaned up, Maki appeared in the mirror beside him, a tube of antibacterial cream in one hand and a package labeled “adhesive stitches” in the other. “Ah, you did have ‘em, huh?”

“Of course I did, a good assassin has what she needs to clean her own injuries up whenever she gets them, can you imagine how awkward it would be to explain how I got a katana slash on my leg to a doctor?” Either Maki was suppressing a laugh, or she was not amused at all by Kaito’s doubt in her, and he didn’t know which one it was even after she’d told him to sit down so that she could reach the cut. “Geez, Kaito, how’d you manage to make this happen? Who’d you piss off to get them angry enough to hurt you?”

“Some dude at the park,” he bluntly replied, knowing that he’d been out taking a walk when everything had transpired. “Called me some names, didn’t bother me. Told me no one would love me, bothered me a bit. Said you’re not real, bothered me a lot. He should’ve stopped talking when I told ‘em my girlfriend could kick his ass, but he didn’t listen and told me that no guy like me would have a girlfriend.”

“I get that you want to defend me, but that’s a dumb reason to challenge a guy to a fight and get yourself beat up,” she said, putting some of the antibacterial cream on the cut and making Kaito loudly scream in her face for it. “You stop that right now, or I’m sending you to the professionals you think should be doing this.”

To try to keep himself from screaming again, he violently winced when she continued applying the ointment, the fact that there was anything touching the wound making him wish he was dead at the moment. “Maki Roll, what if I said that wasn’t all he said?”

“Hm? Then I’d say you’re a liar for leaving out part of the truth. What else did he say?”

He waited until she’d stopped making him feel more pain before he added on the piece of the story he’d left out. “The guy said if you were real, you’d have to be finding pleasure somewhere that wasn’t with me, like a lady of the night or somethin’, I think that’s the term he used.”

“He called me a…prostitute?” Maki repeated, sounded disgusted. “Well, I guess I can’t be upset that you’d leave that out, or that you’d try beating the guy on my behalf. Just next time, make sure you aren’t choosing to fight with someone clearly more skill in combat than you are, this isn’t going to heal well for you.”

“I knew you’d understand when you knew the truth.” Kaito knew that fighting for the honor of the woman he loved would be appreciated, even if he’d been the one to pick the fight in the first place. It took some time, but she was able to stitch him up decently well, although the resulting scar would bisect his eyebrow and leave him open to many stares and questions, and they were able to salvage his jacket from the bloodstains, having to toss the shirt due to being unable to get all of the discoloration out. The scar and the loss of the shirt was a small price to pay for making Maki proud for him standing up for her, though, and he would’ve done it again and again if he needed to.

But if he didn’t need to, that was preferred, and he hoped that he never saw the man in the park again or never interacted with someone willing to call a woman he’d never met a prostitute just because he didn’t like a guy’s look. Thankfully, with the new scar he’d be sporting, he looked moderately more rugged than he had before, and that seemed to deter people from choosing to pick on him. It also had the…unintended effect of making Maki love him even more than she already had, making it a point to trace the mark with her finger whenever she wanted to praise him for something he’d done right. If all it took to make her hopelessly head over heels for him was a little bit of facial markings, perhaps it would have been in his best intentions to get into more fights after all…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is actually not the only time this week Kaito gets beat up, oops


	8. A Starry Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Four, Prompt Two: Cosmos

“Come on, it’s not that much further from here!” Kaito was a few steps ahead on the rocky trail, his hiking backpack bouncing with every stride he took, and Maki rolled her eyes at his eagerness. He made it sound like she was struggling to keep up because she was out of shape, which was as far from the truth as it could possibly be, because for every one step he took she was taking two, therefore having to use more energy to keep up with his blitzing pace. She was curious about where it was that he was leading her towards, the only clue that he’d given her being that they’d have a great view of the stars; she’d never once considered that the view required an hours-long hike to get to in the first place.

When they’d left their car along the road, signs lined both sides of the rocky path saying that cars needed to be locked with all belongings secured, that overnight parking was allowed, and that to beware of bears in the woods. She hadn’t thought much of the warnings, even as Kaito was getting out bags much more prepared than what would be necessary for just a simple hike that would have them back at the car before midnight, even with accounting for spending some time looking at the stars. Obviously she knew now that his bag had to have a tent in it, but then that left them sleeping on the bare bottom of the tent because neither of them had any sort of sleeping bag with them, or food, or anything of that sort. “I still don’t know where it is you’re taking me,” she reminded him, hurrying her pace up a bit just to not be lagging so far behind. “How do I know you’re not going to turn the tables and murder me out in the wilderness?”

“I’d never do anything like that, Maki Roll, don’t act like I ever could!” She gave a single snort of laughter and let the subject drop, because he was not going to tell her where they were going until the were there, and so the hike continued under the darkening sky. When they got to the top of the hill they’d been climbing, the sunset was visible out in the distance over the water, a brilliant display of colors, but Kaito didn’t seem interested in standing around and admiring it. “This way, we’ve just got like another ten minutes and we’ll be there, I promise!”

“You’re starting to sound really confident for someone who doesn’t seem to know where he’s actually going.” She laughed again while he tried defending himself, but he chose to let his destination prove her wrong instead. Within ten minutes they were coming up to a cabin, nestled among the trees, with a staircase that led up to the roof. “Whoa, Kaito, is this where we’re going?”

She could see him nod excitedly, his shoots of hair going everywhere. “My grandparents booked it for us for the night, we could’ve driven up and parked closer but I wanted to have the adventure to get here,” he explained, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a set of unfamiliar keys. “Tonight it’s just gonna be me, you, the forest creatures, and the cosmos.”

“Sounds romantic.” Maki was a bit impressed at the way this had been planned without her knowing a thing, Kaito usually being one to share all of his exciting news as soon as he could, but she didn’t know how weak her reaction to seeing the cabin was until she’d seen the inside. It was decorated much like a honeymoon suite would be, with florals and reds and pinks that made her blush just looking at, while Kaito looked oblivious at what the décor meant for what usually happened in that building.

“Let’s get some food in us, I made sure to get some things packed so that we could cook when we got here, and maybe once we’re done eating we can go up to the roof and do some stargazing!” Sounding incredibly eager to get things going, Kaito threw down his backpack in a flash and began rooting through it, retrieving bottles of water and some “just add water” meals, a convenient pair to have in the same place. When Maki began to go through the bag she’d carried up to the cabin, she found a couple fluted glasses, a bottle of non-alcoholic cider, and some snacks for later, but before she could ask Kaito what the drinks were for he was already getting water boiling on the cabin’s stove, having brought a pot with him.

Their dinner was passable at best, but it was to be expected with the kind of food they’d brought with them, and after they’d finished eating it was dark enough outside that Kaito felt it was time to go look at the stars. He directed Maki to bring everything from her bag with her, and that he’d meet her up on the roof, and rather than ask him what was going on and make them take longer she decided it’d be a better use of her time to just heed his direction in the first place.

If she’d thought the sunset was pretty out on the top of the hill, she could only imagine how much more stunning it would have been there on the rooftop. The stars were so vivid, brighter than she’d ever seen them in person, and they were reflecting on the water that she could see out on the horizon. There was no moon in the sky, which she assumed was why things were arranged for when they were—she’d heard enough from Kaito about how a bright moon could hamper stargazing efforts. “This is amazing,” she said out loud as she heard him coming up the staircase, bringing with him pillows and blankets from inside the cabin. “You and your grandparents really put some thought into this.”

“Yeah we did! I was lookin’ up good places to do something like this and when I found this one, I went right to them and asked for a bit of help to make it work. It’s not cheap to rent a cabin like this, at this time of year. Between people getting married and people who love the stars, it’s hard to find an open day here that actually, y’know, works for sitting on the roof and watching the stars.” Setting his delivery down so that they could begin organizing it, Kaito could see the wonder in Maki’s eyes as she was looking up at the stars more than she was laying the blankets out. “They’re pretty, huh?”

“Breathtaking,” she replied, realizing that she was letting herself get distracted by the view rather than being much help. He’d already gotten everything organized, and had carefully grabbed her bag to get out the drinks and snacks. “I can’t believe you and your grandparents picked this out of nowhere. It feels like you’d have been here before.”

“Nope, never been in my life! Around here? Sure, there’s a peak nearby where my grandfather took me for an overnight camping trip, we had a telescope and everything, but this place is complete new to me.” Having grabbed the glasses and the cider, Kaito opened the bottle and motioned to pour it, seeing that Maki was too distracted by the stars above to see what he was doing. The image of her, sitting there on the rooftop of the cabin with the starlight in her hair and eyes, was enough to make him give an audible sigh. “You’re really takin’ them in right now, Maki Roll. It’s…kinda nice seeing you loving what I love.”

“I-I can’t help that they’re so bright and beautiful.” Her stammering was delayed, as she pulled her eyes from the sky and towards her boyfriend’s smiling face. “Come on, Kaito, don’t act like that, if you weren’t obviously planning something you’d be lost in them too.”

Now was his time to stumble over his words and thoughts, resulting in the glass of cider he’d been pouring nearly filling all the way to the brim before he caught onto what he was doing.

“Since when was I planning something?” he asked, defensively. “I just planned the trip up here, I swear there’s nothin’ more going on than that!”

“I’ve known you long enough to know that you’re acting suspicious right now, but if you want to insist you’re not up to anything, I’ll buy it. This time.” She could hear him heave a sigh of relief and she glanced towards him, seeing him offer the glass he was holding to her. “But you’re not making a great case for yourself, with how fancy this whole setup is. I mean, cider? Actual glasses? A cabin that’s clearly a love suite? It’s not matching what you’re insisting this all is.”

“It’s really nothing more than just a nice date night under the stars,” he said as he poured himself a glass of the cider, making sure it didn’t get nearly as full as hers had. “Spending some quality time with the two things I love most in life, those being you and space.”

“Can’t argue with _that_ , I guess.” After he’d finished pouring his drink and had put the bottle and its remaining liquid aside for safekeeping, they gave a small toast to celebrate the moment before both taking a sip. Right away Maki noticed that her drink tasted odd, but with how dark it was even the starlight wasn’t enough to let her see into the glass for anything that could be tainting her drink. Kaito seemed to be fine sipping from his, but hers had a strange metallic taste to it that unnerved her.

He looked over his drink at her and noticed how hesitant she was to go beyond that first taste. “What’s wrong now, Maki Roll? I told ya, I’m not planning anything except us spending time together up here.”

“Whatever cider this is, it tastes cheap or expired. That, or you did something to it.” Her first instinct would have been to pour it out over the side of the roof, but the way she could see Kaito giving her a pleading look made her reconsider doing it. Instead, she told herself that if she died from him poisoning her, at least she was dying in a beautiful place, and she began drinking from it again. The taste was still there, and when she felt something hard touch her lip it took all of her strength to keep herself from throwing the glass at him. Carefully grabbing whatever the object in her drink was with her mouth, she set her glass aside and then spat out the offending material into her hand, stunned to see a ring staring back at her.

“Okay, okay, maybe I lied a little…” he confessed, setting his drink by the bottle to keep it out of harm’s way. “I was thinkin’ about how you deserve the world, and how I can’t give you it, but I can give you a piece of it that not everyone else gets.” There was a genuine tone to Kaito’s voice that made Maki understand that he couldn’t have told her right away what was going on, because it was meant to be a surprise for her. “It’s a nice night under a starry sky, exactly where I love spendin’ my time. And I’d like…well, I’d like to get to spend all my starry nights with you.”

“So you want to marry me?” Maki asked, still shocked that she was holding a ring, laden with tiny diamonds that were faintly shining in the dim light. “Is that what this is all for?”

“Kinda obvious that it is, don’t you think? Go on, tell me yes or no so we can get to watching the stars.” He waited for a moment, before she was tackling him, showing affection that she always seemed reluctant to give. He’d known from the start that she would accept the proposal, but figuring out a way to do it without her figuring it out had proved to be mostly impossible, even if he’d succeeded on getting her off his trail for a few seconds.

Their night on the roof was spent in each other’s arms, feeding each other the snacks he’d packed and drinking their cider, occasionally turning their attention from the cosmos to look into each other’s eyes, or to see the way the ring fit her tiny finger so perfectly.


	9. Kaito's Childhood Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Five, Prompt One: Dreams

When Kaito was young, his list of aspirations would had been meters long, if his grandparents would have written them down for him. Every day he seemed to want to do something else with his life, from the standard childish dreams to more specialized things, but once he found out that people were able to go out into space and be outside of the planet’s atmosphere all of the other dreams he’d had were erased in place of wanting to become an astronaut. He loved to read about space, watch movies about space, and hear people talk about space; he quickly began to learn all he could about the stars and other planets, proudly proclaiming that he’d go to all of them someday, much to the amusement of anyone who was around him.

As he got older the dream became more refined, and he became focused on knowing all that he could so that he could someday get on a spaceship and soar through the universe, but reality struck him down time and time again. First it was his age, he was too young to be an astronaut and would need to wait a long time before he’d be considered old enough. Then it was his vision, falling just outside the range of what was acceptable without any form of corrective lenses. Finally it was his health, which had never been the greatest when he’d been growing up and would forever haunt his records as being a liability. Even with knowing that his dreams would not be achievable by normal means, Kaito was determined to stake his claim in the stars, and he was not going to take negative answers from anyone.

Medical records could be forged, as could documentation of age, and he could save up the money to get his eyesight corrected, but something about doing all of that made him feel uneasy at best. There had to be reasons for why those were all standards that he needed to meet that he was failing to do so, but was it like Kaito Momota to let people tell him that he wasn’t good enough to achieve his dreams? Of course it wasn’t! He’d done so much to put himself into the position of someday becoming an astronaut that he wasn’t going to just give up because he wasn’t going to make it. He _was_ going to make it!

His grandparents, always the most supportive pair of their grandson’s desires, had decided that they were going to take a hands-off approach when it came to his teenage recklessness, letting him learn things the hard way. So when he darted out of the home one day saying he’d found a way to cover at least one of his potential flaws, they let it happen without being too concerned about what nonsense he was going to get himself into.

He’d been told by a friend at school that there was someone in the neighborhood that had the ability to falsify medical records, and he was going to take that chance to get all of his childhood illnesses scrubbed from his history. He should’ve known right away that the whole situation was sketchy, but he was desperate to get to be an astronaut and he would leap through all the hoops to get there; when he got to the front door of the house where he’d been directed he felt like his heart was about to burst through his chest from the excitement of the whole arrangement. The guy that lived there seemed strangely confused about why a teenager was standing at his door, yammering on about medical records and changing them to have a clean bill of health, but he let him inside anyway.

When Kaito left it was in the custody of the police, who were just as surprised as the man was about the blatant disregard for legality that the kid was showing. He tried to fight and explain himself, despite the officers telling him it’d be best to keep his mouth shut, and he ended up cuffed and tossed in the back seat without any way to get himself free. “I’m tellin’ you, I wasn’t doing anything wrong!” he yelled, his face getting red from the exertion of all of the energy it took to be so angry. “I just wanna get to go to space! Don’t you know what it’s like to have a dream?”

Neither officer replied to him and he continued screaming at them about his goals in life and how he was only there to get that much closer to becoming an astronaut. When they got to the station he had calmed down, but when he had to get his mugshots taken (“as a standard procedure,” the person doing them said, but he didn’t believe it) he tried to kick up a fuss and argue to be let free.

“The longer you fight, the longer they’ll keep you here,” a female voice said, and Kaito, confused because the person with the mugshots was a guy, looked around until he saw a tiny girl with her hair hanging in two long braids. “It’s pretty common knowledge.”

“She’s right,” the photographer agreed, before doing a double-take and looking at the girl for himself. “Geez, _again_ with you here? This is what, the third time this month?”

Kaito shut up as he listened to the girl nonchalantly explain that she couldn’t help her problematic behavior, and when the photographer was done being distracted by her he got the mugshots done and sent him on his was. He figured that was the end of things, that he’d be sent to a cell and forced to eat soup and stale bread for the rest of his life, but when he was escorted into a room with actual furniture in it, he felt that maybe he was being forgiven after all. That changed moments later when the same girl was brought in, her hands in cuffs just like his still were, and when the door was closed behind them both she immediately went to sit in one of the chairs.

“You’re a new face around here,” she said, giving Kaito a once-over from toes to head, glaring at him when she got to his eyes. “You look like a jock bastard who tried scamming his way onto a sports team. That’s not jail-worthy, so what did you do to get locked up?”

“Dreamt about being an astronaut,” Kaito replied, letting his shoulders fall as he realized he wasn’t getting to go home like he thought he was going to. The girl laughed at his blunt answer and it stung to be made fun of, causing him to snap, “Come on! It’s a real dream, and I’m gonna make it happen!”

She didn’t even flinch at his raised voice. “Dreams don’t get someone handcuffs and mugshots. You had to have done something to deserve it.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not telling me what you did to get in here, so—”

“Beat a guy black and blue for failing to pay his rent,” she cut in, not batting an eyelash at how brutal her crime was. “Not the first time I’ve done it, and it’s definitely not the last. Have to do what I can to pay the bills, since the stupid orphanage kicked me out.”

“—okay, fine, twist my arm, won’t ya? I tried to get a guy to make me some fake medical records, because my health’s not good enough for me to be an astronaut.” Admitting to what he’d tried to do felt dirty on Kaito’s tongue, and seeing the girl’s smug face about it wasn’t doing him any favors. “My dream means a lot to me, y’know!”

“Clearly. You could go away for a _long_ time for that, but you won’t.” She rolled her eyes, watching as he was steadily growing uneasy about being in the room with her. “They’ll let us both go soon enough, it’s just a slap on the wrist being in here like this. The cops, they know what I do for a living, they forgive my crimes whenever I get caught because I’m at least not killing the guys anymore. And you…first crime, I assume?”

“Yeah,” he replied, not sure how he was supposed to take any of what she was saying. “I’m a good kid, I swear. My grandparents are always proud of me, but this time they’re gonna wonder what I was thinking and…”

“Huh, grandparents. Wonder what it’s like to have those.” She began to look past where Kaito was still standing, checking the doorway for any movement on the other side. “Not like it matters, I’m sure my family would be super pleased if they knew I chase human scum to make ends meet. At least I’m not too proud to admit I’m not good enough for other things.”

That was a direct blow to Kaito and he knew it, and he charged towards her, stopping just out of the reach of her short legs. “It’s my dream, I’m not givin’ it up just because of one stupid reason! Haven’t you ever had a dream before?”

“Of course I have. To not die. To find a family that wants me. To get to stay at the orphanage once I turn sixteen. To not get murdered on a hit gone wrong.” Everything she was saying sounded so foreign to Kaito that he almost didn’t believe she was saying actual dreams, but they checked out when compared to the rest of the story she’d told him. He’d been acting selfish and got in trouble for it, while she found herself in hot water trying to survive.

The door to the room opened and an officer stood in the doorway. “Harukawa,” he announced, the girl jumping to her feet and narrowly missing hitting Kaito with her braids as she stood. “Your ride’s here to get you back where you belong. Try not to be back so soon, will you?”

“No promises on that,” she replied, before giving Kaito a nod. “See you around, astronaut.”

He was speechless about how to reply to her farewell, knowing that seeing her again would most likely mean he was in some sort of trouble, and he wanted to keep himself on the straight and narrow for the rest of his life. His grandparents were there soon after and he got to leave without any further punishment, and he was given a stern talking-to on the way home, but ultimately the experience changed his life in ways that no one would have expected. Sure, he wasn’t going to try getting records changed anymore, but he was always fearful of what would happen if he ended back in the jail and crossed paths with the girl a second time.

When their paths _did_ cross again it was slightly more innocent, years later after he’d stopped dreaming about being an astronaut and instead became more level-headed about life in general, choosing instead to use that supposedly jock physique to do bodyguard work here and there. He was standing outside a nightclub just before close, watching the street for any unruly people who might have tried coming inside, when he saw a pair of familiar long braids rush past him. Instinct took over, and he yelled, “Harukawa! Get over here!”

The girl—now a woman that looked mostly the same as she had as a teen, minus the intense expression upon her face—froze at the sound of her name and turned around, seeing Kaito standing in the doorway. “Astronaut! Funny seeing you around here! A bit more down to Earth, are we now?”

“Guess we could say it that way,” he replied, scuffing his work boot up against the brick wall of the building as she approached him. “What’s got you runnin’ around down these streets? Jerks that need to be beat up for not paying their rent?” He wished he hadn’t remembered exactly what had happened to get her in jail that time with him, but the way she’d said it had stuck with him every day since their first meeting.

Her expression soured more than it already had been. “I wish it was that simple, but I’m supposed to be going to…” She trailed off and lowered her voice to say, “I’m supposed to break up a bit of a mafia party a few blocks over. You wouldn’t understand, it’s the name of the game that I call life.”

“Well, why don’t ya decide not to do it tonight and come back to it another time?” Cue her laughing and explaining that it was time sensitive, and that if she didn’t do it then, it could come back to haunt her by way of her bosses. “Just tell ‘em that you couldn’t make it, and that you’ll get them next time. I’m sure they’ll understand!”

“Look, I get that you want to talk to me, but it has to wait. Next time you see me, don’t scream out my last name, by the way, it gets the assholes on my case faster.” She flashed him a grin and charged off, leaving him stunned in her wake because the only name he’d known for her _was_ the one he’d used.

Their third meeting came days later, in the same spot, but instead of running by the doorway she walked right up to him with an identification card in hand. “Here, since you’re acting like a guard, you can check this and let me in,” she said to him, as he took the card from her and began checking it. “It’s the only thing I’ve got with my name and information on it.”

“Maki Harukawa,” he read, looking from her name to her face and back. “It’s pretty, kinda like you.”

“Of course it is, now tell me what your name is, so I can stop calling you ‘Astronaut’ when I’m dreaming about you.” She spoke with a deadpan, but Kaito was fairly certain she was joking with the statement, and after he’d given her his name she snatched her ID back and stared up at him. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been dreaming about you for years and your name is something dumb like Kaito?” A pause, followed by, “Eh, I guess it fits the dumb jock thing you’ve still got going for you.”

“I don’t think that’s supposed to be a compliment,” he deduced, watching her try not to laugh at his statement. “Can’t let you in, but the club’s closing soon and I’ll be able to go, why don’t ya hang around and we can go get drinks or something somewhere else? Unless, of course, you’ve got mafia stuff to deal with.”

Maki cracked a smile, taking a seat up against the wall near his legs, the smell of spilled alcohol and discarded cigarettes enveloping her. “Would you look at that, I happen to be free tonight,” she remarked, staring up at him with eyes that seemed to be sizing him up. “And for you, I think I’d try to be free forever.”


	10. Haunting Experiences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Five, Prompt Two: Memory

Living in the real world after the conclusion of the killing game—the ending of Danganronpa as a series, thanks to her and her friends—was difficult for Maki to wrap her head around from time to time. She knew that what had happened within the confines of the fictional world was just that, fictional, but it still came back to haunt her by means of memories that she never wanted to replace, never wanted to toss out and forget about entirely. Her memories focused almost exclusively on two individuals, one she still knew and one she wished she did, and she would find herself staring out into nothingness thinking about various scenes and situations that she’d been forced to live through.

The ones that involved Shuichi, she was always able to discuss with him whenever he made himself available to her to do so. They didn’t live in the same town, and if she could have it her way it wouldn’t have been the same _country_ , but every so often he’d call her and they’d talk through the memories that were haunting their day-to-day lives because of what they’d endured. He was always thinking about her, or about Kaede, and she could hear his voice crack when he’d talk about the conversations he’d had post-show with the pianist who really knew next to nothing about how to play a piano. “It sucks that none of us were who we thought we were,” he admitted, his whole story about being a detective being false, although he did come back to a reality where he was working in the law field. “I would’ve loved to have really gone and practiced piano with her sometime.”

“I’m sure you would have,” Maki replied, trying not to sound callous with the terseness of her response. “Must be nice knowing that you can actually talk to her. How’s her family treat you whenever you guys have your calls?”

“I think they understand that we need to talk to each other in private to heal from what happened to us.” He’d talked at length before about how Kaede was just a college kid who lived with her parents and her sister and didn’t do much more than study and go out partying on weekends. She may not have been who the game had made her out to be, but she still seemed decent enough, and if Maki cared she probably would have tried reaching out. “We’re going to have a coffee date one of these days, there’s a shop halfway between my work and the campus.”

“Good for you.” Again the response seemed rough, but Maki really did not want to hear about how he was going to have an actual relationship with the person he’d fallen for in the killing game, when she’d never even spoken to Kaito _once_ since everything had ended. She knew where he was, getting treatment overseas for the illness he’d truly had in reality, but she only knew that because his grandparents, who were real and actually his guardians, had reached out to her and let her know that much. She didn’t want to sound too angry at Shuichi about how lucky he was with getting to reconnect with Kaede, but at the same time she was struggling to mask her true emotions.

She would not have been lying in the slightest if she said she wished that she’d had the life that she’d been given in the killing game, compared to the life she actually led. Every day was a struggle to survive in a town that was far too expensive for her to live in, even with the pay she’d received from being on the show. Her day job was working reception at a therapist office, which she found catharsis in whenever the clients would leave and she could slip into the office, talking out all of her problems to someone who docked her pay for that exact reason. At night she sat alone in a barely-furnished apartment, overlooking a sparkling city that would have been so much more exciting to live in if she’d had someone else there to live with her.

The memories that she had to deal with often were about the end of the game, about the desperation in their hearts when they’d thought they were going to die there, only to come out of the rubble and find their way back to reality. She wasn’t sure how much of what she remembered was real and how much she’d added in the time since things had ended, but she’d almost entirely blocked out Himiko from things and instead focused all of her memory power on what Shuichi had done right then. (That wasn’t a dig at Himiko by any means, she’d just not wanted to force herself to remember how horrified she’d been at things when she was quite the different person outside of the game, stronger and more confident.)

But sometimes, as she’d be sitting out on the balcony, looking out at the stars in the sky, Maki would find herself remembering more about Kaito than anyone else, their relationship that they’d had in the game being so whirlwind and so unlike anything she’d experienced that it was hard to forget about it. She’d come to learn after she returned to her real life that she’d always been closed off from others, and the fact that the fictional her had been the same way but opened up for one space-themed man was laughable, but she felt in her heart that her feelings for Kaito had been real, they’d been the actual her bleeding through.

The memories of how she’d train with him and Shuichi, or how she’d helped him learn to build a crossbow, or how she’d thought she killed him and had to see him come back just to watch him die, just to learn he was alive but dying somewhere else…they’d hit her with the force of something unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Kaito’s astronaut persona may not have been real by any stretch of the imagination, but the love she’d learned to feel for him was real, and it killed her a little more each day when she’d come home to her empty apartment and remember that she wasn’t meant to be with him. They weren’t meant to connect, they weren’t going to get to know each other, they were going to remain separate entities for the rest of their lives and there wasn’t anything that could be done about it.

Her calls to talk about the floods of memories went on regularly, and she couldn’t help herself but maintain feeling the bitterness in her heart whenever Shuichi would talk about how he was actually meeting with some of the others. He detailed his coffee date with Kaede, which turned into a regular deal where she rambled about her school work and he thought about how to get back to his job, as well as arranged meetings with some of the others that they’d been in the game with. He talked to Himiko almost as often as the calls were, because she was in constant need of reassurance that the game had happened and that she wasn’t dead, even though she was so strong compared to her passively weak self in-game. He’d had meetings with Tenko (who was still strongly anti-male, and was very much athletic, but preferred running track events over doing martial arts), and Kirumi (who worked for the catering company assigned to feeding the prime minister), and he’d spoken once about seeing Kokichi in passing, but none of them were who Maki wanted to hear him talk about.

None of them were Kaito.

And so none of them really, truly mattered.

The bitterness only grew as they went on longer from the ending of the series, and she was beginning to lose the prominence of the memories in her mind. If she didn’t have the ability to remember what Kaito’s face looked like, what his touch had felt like, what his voice sounded like, Maki wasn’t sure how she was going to survive in her bleak existence, yet as much as she didn’t want to lose the things so dear to her she knew she had to overcome them. She couldn’t let herself be hung up forever on Danganronpa, even if it had changed her life in so many ways.

Calling Shuichi went from a common event, to once in a while, to the point that she wasn’t able to recall the last time she’d talked to him. No one else had ever reached out to her, and she wasn’t going to make that attempt herself, so she was completely and utterly alone in that regard. That was, until a knock on her door brought her world around her crashing down, shattering into a million pieces that she wasn’t going to be able to pick up.

The person on the other side of the door was gaunt, nothing more than skin and bones, with brittle hair that looked like it was on the verge of falling out. The face was familiar even in its completely angular form, the lack of facial hair concerning but not a deal breaker, and when Maki saw the sunken-in purple eyes shining at her she knew that she’d been given a miracle there in that moment. “Can I…come in?” Kaito’s raspy voice asked, unlike how he’d spoken before but understandably so. “There were a…lot of…stairs to…”

“Yes! Come in!” Maki’d never invited someone inside so fast in her life, and as she watched him hobble into her apartment she only wished that she had more furniture for him to pick from to sit on. He was able to make it to one of her only chairs in the room before stumbling, needing to catch himself with a twig-like arm that was so different from how it had looked when she’d last known him. After he was seated, he was fumbling through the bag he’d carried with him, pulling out all sorts of medications to find whatever he was looking for, and she did him a favor and got him some water before he strained himself to ask for some.

The room was silent for a while as he collected himself, his whole body tremoring every time he took in a deep breath, and she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him to make him look so miserable. His grandparents had mentioned him being treated for an illness, but they’d never specified about what it was and she’d never pushed the question. “I got your…address from…ugh, I can’t remember…” Kaito was wincing as he tried to pull the information he was looking for from the air, and she so badly wanted to help him. “My grandparents said you’d…like to see me, maybe.”

The eagerness in her nod must have been apparent, based on how he smiled at it. “I’d always hoped that I’d get to, yeah,” she replied, not wanting to sound too desperate for this interaction. “Wish it would’ve been under better circumstances, you’re looking rough.”

“What? This is the best I’ve looked in…weeks? Months?” He seemed aware of how his current condition differed from how he’d looked in the game, but he wasn’t going to let it slow him down. “I got put in the hospital for a…long while. Bad times, really. Only learned to walk again last month. Talking right before that. Kind of a miracle that I made it here.” One of the things he pulled out of his bag was his phone, and he feebly offered it to Maki so that she could see the pictures on it, images that must have been taken by either his grandparents or the hospital staff because of how raw and unfiltered they were. He clearly had been on the brink of death, and it was nothing short _of_ a miracle that he was there with her right then.

“So, why here? Why come to visit me, of all people?” she happened to ask after passing the phone back, not wanting to stomach too many more of the pictures. “I’m sure everyone else would’ve been just as happy to see you.”

He tried to laugh but it was only air, no sound attached. “All I thought about was you. Needed a happy memory…when they were drawing blood? You, it was about you. Coming back from flatlining? Your face was right there. I had to see you again.” The breaths were there, shallow and needing force to happen with regularity. “Even if you aren’t…the _you_ I was seeing.”

“I’m about as close to it as you’re going to get, all things considered,” she replied, feeling strangely flattered that he’d just admitted to using her as his means for keeping his sanity and his life during a tough time. “I may not be an assassin like I was in all of those memories, but I’m pretty similar to the me you knew.”

“You definitely look like it.” He wasn’t lying, she did still have the long hair that she’d had in the game, the short stature, the lean frame that wasn’t physically imposing in the slightest, but everyone looked similar enough to who they’d been in fiction. The lone person to look strikingly different was him, and she was sure he knew it. “I wanna get to know you, Maki. This you, just like I…knew the other you.”

Nodding in agreement, Maki moved herself so that she was closer to him, close enough for her hand to brush against his leg if she barely reached in his direction. “Same to you, Kaito. I’d be honored if we’d get to spend time together, once you’re better and all that. Don’t want you overexerting yourself just to see me.”

“I’ll climb a million stairs for you.”

“I’d rather you not.”

They sat and talked for a long time, until a reminder on his phone went off and he started scrambling to find things in the bag he’d brought with him, pulling out an entire case of medications for him to pick through. It pained her to watch it happen, but she knew pretending like it wasn’t happening would only make things worse—the Kaito she’d known in-game was sick too, even if she hadn’t known it until late—and if she wanted to pursue being in this one’s life she needed to accept his struggles. He didn’t seem to mind having to take so many different types of medicine, which he ended up explaining the purpose of once he’d swallowed down the small handful of pills he’d gotten.

None of the medications meant anything to her, at most she was familiar with antidepressants and mood stabilizers and things prescribed to the patients the therapist saw on the regular, so Kaito had to strain himself to break down all of the ailments he was medicating for. With every problem he talked about she wanted to shrink away, realizing that he was much worse off in the real world than she ever could have guessed, from needing a transplanted lung to having all sorts of further issues that had developed over the course of waiting for that transplant. By all accounts, he should _not_ have shown up unannounced to the front door of a house belonging to someone he hadn’t ever actually met in the flesh, but he made it very clear that he was there to see the guardian angel who had existed in his memory to get him through the painful waiting period.

“Okay, so now that all that’s behind you, what do you expect to do with your life?” she asked him, resisting the need to look up how long someone who’d had a transplanted lung could reliably live. “What’s your goal? You did Danganronpa, now what?”

“Fun question,” he replied with a smirk, his lips visibly cracked from all of the talking he’d been doing. “Before this, before that…I was a film kid. Big on the movies. Wanted to be one of the stars.”

“Makes sense as to how they got ‘astronaut’ from that, I guess.” Maki wasn’t expecting the title he’d been given in the game to relate to his life, so that came as a pleasant surprise. “But let me guess, you got sick and all that had to get tossed out, huh?”

Kaito’s pause lasted nearly a minute, time spent deep in thought about how to reply. “Acting, yeah, I don’t want to do that anymore. But…spending all that time in bed, I got to watch a…lot of movies. More than I’d ever seen. I never thought I’d be so in love with…”

He trailed off looking straight at her, and Maki felt like his eyes were staring deep into her soul, as if he’d gotten sidetracked on what he was saying. “In love with how they film things?” she suggested, hoping to get him back to explaining his dreams. “I can see you as a producer or whatever, bet you’ve got a real eye for setting the scene and the drama that goes with it.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, cinematography’s neat. I’d love to know how to make the perfect movie.” His eyes were still focused on her, and she didn’t know what to do at that point. There was clearly something else running through his mind and she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to spit it out or let it fall to the wayside. “But I don’t know if I’ll get to do it. Lots of competition there. Lots of people who went to school for it.”

She laughed, a memory of something she’d heard said at the end of the game coming back to her mind, something she knew had found its source in him. “The impossible is possible, isn’t it? All you have to do is make it so.”

“You’re right, but…like this? Not happening.” He tried flexing an arm but the pitiful display of wasted-away muscle was enough to make him stop within seconds. “I’ll stick to writing screenplays, actually. I’ve got the stuff figured out, I just…need someone who’ll read it for me. Tell me if it’s good.”

“Are you telling me that’s why you’re here, Kaito? To ask me to do that for you?” She was sure it wasn’t, but for the moment where Maki had convinced herself that it was she felt herself filling with a bubbling rage. Their conversation had been so pure, so enlightening, up until that point that to find out that he was there only to solicit her assistance made her angrier than she could recall ever actually feeling. But when he shook his head and insisted that wasn’t the case, the rage rushed away and she audibly sighed. “Then why are you here, if it’s not that? Is it really just to see me?”

“Wouldn’t lie to you, Maki. You saved me without knowing it. Least I could do was come thank you for it.” There was so much genuine emotion in his voice that discrediting him was impossible, and she felt thankful for his honesty. They talked a bit longer, until he said he needed to leave for the night, so that he could get home before he needed to medicate again, but when he didn’t tell her how he was getting home or where home was, she immediately took control of things. She decided she would take him home, so that she knew where to visit him the next time he wanted to see her, and she wasn’t going to have it any other way.

It took an excruciatingly long time for them to get down the stairs, Kaito frequently getting winded but stubbornly refusing her help, and once they were on the bottom floor of the building she had him wait in the lobby while she got her car and drove it from the garage to out front, a much shorter walk than him having to go along with her. Their ride was filled with more conversation, and when Maki finally dropped him off outside his grandparents’ home outside of town she felt like she’d found closure she wasn’t expecting to get with that surprise visit.

“I put my number in your phone, you better call me whenever you want to talk,” she told him with a sternness in her voice, him nodding at her words. “I mean it, Kaito. This, well, meant a whole lot to me, to see you in the flesh and not in memories.”

“Same back to you, I’ll call when I need you. Maybe next time we see each other…I’ll be looking a bit better.” They shared a smile before he was heading inside, his grandparents waving at her from the doorway, and for the ride home she felt a hole inside her chest patching itself up knowing that things weren’t all that bad with Kaito after all.

When she’d gotten home and started cooking dinner for herself, she heard her phone ringing from where she’d plugged it in, but she didn’t check it until after she’d eaten. The call she’d missed was from Kaito, and the voicemail he’d left was simple: _I’ll be looking forward to next time. You really are an angel, Maki Roll._

Hearing the nickname she’d thought she’d despise forever made her heart swell until it felt like it would burst. She had Kaito back in her life, and even if neither of them were the people who’d originally fallen in love, she had a good feeling about their chances at making that happen again in the real world.


	11. Demon Patrol Corps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Six, Prompts One and Two: Hero/Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic, and the two tomorrow, are kinda like culminations of various little things that have happened this week already, just in different ways. why? because I like playing with the same tropes over and over, but making them unique, haha.

All things considered, the city looked rather nice when it was from up above, but Maki hated when she was assigned to patrolling on the helicopter, sitting in the back and waiting to see the tell-tale sign that there was inappropriate activity somewhere before they landed. She would occasionally glance towards the pilot, completely obscured in shadows to keep their identity a secret from anyone who may see the helicopter flying around, before remembering that she and she alone was allowed to have who she was known by the public. As one of the few people authorized to deal with demons, she had a reputation that preceded her in every situation, and stopping fights was the biggest one of all.

“I think I see something over by the bay,” she announced after noticing a spark of light shoot into the air on the water’s edge—a flare being released to get her attention. “Must be something happening because the bars are closing. Damn demons, they sure do love picking on the drunks.” The pilot did not verbally acknowledge what she had said but she knew she’d been heard when she could feel the helicopter beginning its descent, heading down to the landing pad that was closest to the bay. Once they were close enough to the ground she tossed the ladder over the side of the open door and climbed down it, used to having to adjust for the swaying that the rotating blades put her through as she descended, and once she was solidly on the ground the helicopter was disappearing into the night.

Grabbing the phone that was attached to her hip, Maki opened it and pressed several keys before slamming it closed and putting it back, having sent the call that she was en route to a potential demon encounter and to keep an ear out for a distress call. Her feet ran quickly across the cobblestone streets, the bayside neighborhood known for its bars, its quaint atmosphere, and its propensity for demon sightings. As she got closer to where she’d seen the flare shoot from, she could hear voices yelling and screaming, some in terror and some in anger, and she picked up her pace to arrive on scene as fast as she could.

The demon in question stood at least a meter taller than any of the surrounding humans, deep purple skin and matching eyes staring down at the crowd that had gathered around it. “Get back where you belong, scum!” a man wielding a large rake bellowed, pointing his makeshift weapon towards the demon, whose attention went to him. “We don’t serve your kind around here, not when you’ve clearly not been humanized. Get outta here, before we call the authorities on you!”

“Too late for that,” Maki muttered, knowing that she wasn’t going to be heard by anyone in the crowd, especially not the man. More people were gathering by the second, and she knew that if she didn’t move with haste she would potentially see an enraged demon lash out in confusion and anger at what was happening around it. Looking around for any way to get to it without needing to push through the crowd itself, Maki spotted a ladder up the side of one of the nearby taverns, a fire escape for the upper floors of the building, and she swiftly climbed up it until she was several stories up. Cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice, she called out, “Everyone, back away from the demon at once. I am here to handle it, you do not need to worry any longer.”

Everyone’s attention went to her, and at her word many of the people gathered left, but there was still a sizeable group huddled around the demon, as if they were going to protect the world from it with their untrained minds. She sighed, hopping up onto the rail of the fire escape before leaping towards the demon, landing on its back and sliding down it, until she was able to grab onto its shoulders in a split-second motion. “I said, I’m here to handle this so don’t worry, get lost!”

That was enough to get everyone, minus the man with the rake, to disperse. “Just who do you think _you_ are?” the man asked, still wielding his rake like it was a weapon that could do anything to the thick skin of a demon. “Some little girl, deciding she’s gonna play hero?”

“No, you moron, I’m Harukawa of the Demon Patrol Corps, I’ve trained all my life for stopping these suckers.” She’d always made it a point to use her last name while on shift, just in case a demon was partially humanized and could understand what she was saying. This one, seemingly not caring that a human was clinging to its back, was an example of one that wouldn’t have known a thing going on around it, but it was always better to play safe rather than sorry. “You’ll be safer back in your home than out here watching me do my work, I can promise you that.”

The man spat some curses and set his rake down outside his home before walking inside, slamming the door and causing the demon to jerk wildly at the noise. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure all of that was just peachy for you,” she said, letting go of her grip so that she slid to the ground. “Too bad that you got this far without being taught anything better, you’d make for a good demon model out in this world.” The demon was turning around to see what she was doing, but she was quicker than its lumbering motions, reaching into the bag she wore on her back to retrieve a syringe and a vial, dipping the needle into the vial and drawing out the liquid without blinking. “Hope you pull a better straw in the next life,” she told it, knowing it wasn’t understanding her words, before jamming the filled syringe into its arm and injecting the liquid into its body.

The effect was almost immediate, as the demon’s eyes widened and it let out a harrowing screech, flailing its arm with the needle still in it and running off into the night, Maki watching it with a sad shake of her head. “Well, that’s not optimal, but it’ll be fine. Maybe if it dies in whatever place it’s been living in, its friends will realize that the human world isn’t meant for them.”

With that, she tossed the empty vial of the tranquilizer liquid into the first trash can she saw and began the walk home, sending the all clear message to her bosses as she traveled. It was a dirty job, but she hadn’t been lying when she’d told the man that she’d been training her whole life for the job. Her parents, uninformed and well-meaning souls, had dropped her off at an orphanage that specialized in the process that was known as humanizing demons, raising them to be more in line with humans than the vicious and vulgar creatures that most people thought demons were. She’d been adopted into the care of the head technicians, growing up alongside the demons that they were treating, and it was only logical that she’d learned the ways of humanizing just like most kids learned how to play sports.

She’d never thought too much about how different her upbringing was compared to that of the other people her age, until she’d been faced with a demon and had to take care of it in the only way society deemed it acceptable to. Allowing a demon to run amok in human society, when it knew nothing of how humans lived, was seen as a threat, and the people like her who knew how to grapple with the demons were deemed the heroes in the situation. Maki usually didn’t feel like a hero when she was doing the dirty side of the work her adoptive parents had raised her to do, but she didn’t have a choice in doing it.

What made her feel heroic, though, was when she could interact with the demons she’d personally had a hand in helping integrate into society, the demons who could live around humans and not face the brutal consequences. They were the ones picked up as infants and toddlers and raised in orphanages, their skin a variety of purples, pinks, and blues, and she’d been able to watch them grow into towering monsters who, aside from their appearance, were basically normal, everyday humans.

Some were fashion models, some held desk jobs, some had picked up talents and gotten supernaturally good at them (which made sense, given that they were supernatural beings), but the demon that had Maki’s heart completely on lock was the one that had been taken in months after she initially had, that she’d been raised alongside even after most other demons left to pursue their own lives. She only saw him on days when she wasn’t working, just in case his curiosity got the better of him and he started rummaging through her work bag and accidentally injecting himself with tranquilizer, but she always looked forward to the days she’d get to spend in his thick, purple arms, feeling him hold onto her tightly and beg for his Harukawa to never leave him.

Sometime just before sunrise she made it back to the research facility, letting herself inside with a swipe of her ID card and stumbling in, tiredness overcoming her the moment she knew she was completely safe. It would have been convenient if someone would have been able to pick her up rather than making her walk back, but she knew that the helicopter was a limited resource and couldn’t come back to pick up whoever it had dropped off, and asking anyone else to travel out in the dead of night was just too much, apparently. She made it to her bedroom, a tiny annex off the main lobby, and after making sure the door was locked she threw off all of her clothes, let her long hair free of its twin ponytails, and crawled into bed, falling asleep almost immediately.

She’d end up doing the same thing every night for the next two weeks, either going out on a demon hunt and coming back before sunrise, or sitting at the helipad waiting in case it was her turn to go up in the air. But once her long string of shifts was over, she was able to leave the facility freely for a few days, and those days were always spent sleeping on the couch in a shabby apartment usually lived in by demons, because she was not going to waste a moment with her demon friend.

His name was Kaito, he’d selected the last name Momota for himself when he’d aged out of the program and had been declared perfectly humanized, and he was the most gentle and well-meaning of demons that Maki had ever met. That being said, he was quite dense about most subjects and tended to get hot-headed when he was passionate about something, but his brilliance in terms of astronomy and related fields was what had earned him the title of being humanized. He always had Maki’s schedule handy, so that he was available at his apartment whenever she arrived, and he would spend all of his time with her before she had to go back to work.

It was no exception on this occasion, as Maki trudged up the rickety stairs to the top-floor apartment Kaito called home, him claiming he wanted to be as close to the stars as possible when he’d picked the place. She got to the front door and gave a single knock, her personal belongings in a bag slung over her shoulder, and he opened it immediately, a large grin on his angled face. “Harukawa!” he barked, his whole body shaking with excitement. “You came back! I thought you were gone forever!”

“You knew when I’d be back, don’t lie to me,” she replied, coming inside to a home that looked similar to one a human would live in, except all of the furniture was scaled to be much larger than humans needed. “Besides, I have four whole days off shift this week. You know what that means, yeah?”

“We’re gonna go see the stars together!” It was something that Kaito had looked forward to ever since Maki had first suggested the idea to him, years before; if she ever had more than three days off in a row (which required a blessing, even if the people who scheduled her were her adoptive parents), she would take him out away from the city and they’d go stargazing together. “I’ve gotta go pick up the telescope, I bought a special one from a guy who said that it’d be perfect for my eyes! You’ll wait here when I go do that, won’t you?”

She knew why he didn’t want her to go with, because a member of the Demon Patrol Corps entering a demon marketplace would be a cause for concern. “I’ll wait here for you to get back, I won’t even think about leaving while you’re gone.” Talking to him was so similar to talking to other humans that, as long as she wasn’t looking at him, she could barely tell he was a demon, but then she’d see his purple skin, hair, and eyes, the claws on his giant hands and the feet that couldn’t fit shoes due to how oversized they were, the teeth that could tear apart human flesh instantly, and the way that towered over her (he was easily three meters tall, dwarfing her by quite a bit). “I promise I’ll still be here when you get back, Kaito. I’ve never left you before, have I?”

“Only when you have to go back to work,” he recalled, a sharp claw brushing against his chin. “But you won’t be going back tonight, so there’s nothing for me to worry about! I’ll go tonight when the sun’s down, so that the human people don’t freak out when they see me in the streets!” There was always a positive lilt to Kaito’s gruff voice, and it was enough to melt Maki’s heart every time she heard it.

Why, oh why, did she have to have fallen in love with a creature that she was supposed to protect the humans from? “If you’re worried about people freaking out, you can always wear a vest that says you’re humanized, they’ll back off in that case. I know you don’t like calling yourself out like that but it’d solve your problem.”

“No, Harukawa, I can’t do that. I got this telescope from a guy who’s, uh, one of the demons you do your thing with. If he knows I’m with the human people, he’ll not sell it to me and we won’t be able to see the stars.” The dejection in Kaito’s voice was obvious, and it hurt Maki to hear him talking about potentially losing something he’d been looking forward to. “I will go after dark, and everything will be fine.”

“Then what will we do before dark?” It was barely noon, she was exhausted from her shift the previous night, and she knew what she wanted to suggest, but it was up to Kaito to determine what they did. “Do you have anything that needs to be done that you can’t do yourself, or…?”

He thought for a second before jumping onto his oversized sofa, his large feet flying into the air and nearly knocking her out of the way. “Nap time! It’s been so long since we last got to cuddle, we should do that first!”

“You’ve read my mind,” she said, stifling a laugh as she set her bag down and came towards him, his arms reaching out to grab her and pull her into his chest, easily her favorite place in the world. She was naturally comfortable around all demons, even the ones that could kill her if they thought to do so, but there was something about Kaito in specific that made her feel safer and warmer than she ever had anywhere else. If it were up to her, she’d give up her profession to live with him full-time, being his human companion for the rest of his life, but she couldn’t abandon the family that had raised her, even if she would have loved to have been able to call him family.

The fates had a cruel way of playing with the hearts of heroes, though, and that night long after the city had fallen asleep, she was still sitting awake in his living room, impatiently waiting for his return. If she had brought her work phone with her she would have done a check to see if any patrol members had been dispatched that night, but she was completely in the dark as to what could have been going on. That changed when the front door came flying open and Kaito came inside, his face and neck covered in blood and the pieces of a broken telescope resting in his arms. “Someone called your friends on me,” he explained, spitting out a tooth and a glob of blood onto his floor. “Got me real good as I tried to tell ‘em that I’m with you, that you’re with me, that I’m humanized, that—”

“They should have stopped when they knew you were humanized, which is obvious just looking at you, but they didn’t listen when you said you’re with me?” Jumping to her feet and rushing to check Kaito’s wounds, Maki’s eyes were instantly drawn to a mark that she knew to be caused by a tranquilizer injection. “They got you with the tranq too, huh? Oh, Kaito, I should have gone with you, you big dummy!”

“They stuck a needle in my arm, yeah. Kinda made me feel weird, then they beat me until I was seein’ blood, and then I played dead and they left me alone.” At once he dropped what remained of the telescope and he slumped to the floor, more blood dribbling out of his nose and mouth as he continued talking. “If that’s what you do to demons like me, I don’t think I want to be with you anymore, Harukawa. That really hurt.”

She was on the verge of tears as she looked him over, seeing evidence of there having been actual weapons used in the assault on her dearest demon. “We’re not supposed to use true violence against demons! The first thing they did wrong was not listen to you claim to be humanized, they have ways of checking that! The second thing was ignoring that you’re with me! And the third, the third…” She sniffled, the flood gates opening and her cheeks becoming covered in streams of tears. “The tranquilizers don’t do anything on demons who have been raised to resist them. They should have known then that you were meaning no harm to anyone, they should never have raised a hand or a weapon against you.”

“But they did, and it wasn’t very nice. Plus they broke my telescope, and I was gonna use that this week.” He spat out more blood, a second tooth coming with, before giving her a wary smile, allowing her to see that between the missing teeth and the broken ones, he had about half as many as he should have. “I’m not a bad demon, am I, Harukawa?”

“Not at all, Kaito, and whoever did this to you…they deserve to pay.” In her heart Maki knew who had been so vicious against the demon she loved, even if she couldn’t put a face or a name to the assailant. She knew it was someone the family that had raised her would have set up for the job, for the purpose of keeping her from going off and spending time with the kind of creature she’d been trained to dispose of. The fact that she’d worked for them, with them, for so long and had been so proud of her role as a member of the Demon Patrol Corps, only for them to turn their backs on her just because she had feelings for a demon, was a gigantic slap to the face. “I’m not returning to my job, not after they did this to you. You never meant harm to anyone, and they caused harm to you.”

“So what’re ya gonna do then? Just stop showing up to work? Aren’t they going to find you?” Kaito raised a good point, even in his semi-delirious state, and she hadn’t quite worked through the solution to that problem. She still had a few days before she was expected to go back, and she assumed she’d find the answer to the question of what she was going to do in that time.

Before then, though, there was something she’d promised him she’d do and she wasn’t going to let it be ruined by some nasty plot to separate them. “I’ll figure out what I’m doing later, right now let’s get you cleaned up and go out to the roof. We might not have the best view since we’re in the city, but maybe we’ll see some decent stars up there.”

“We’re gonna stargaze tonight? Oh man, that’s super exciting!” Kaito needed help back to his feet, a task that Maki could barely manage being so small compared to him, but he was soon back to standing and they went to the kitchen to wash off his face and allow her to get a better look at what they’d done to his handsome visage. For being a demon he’d always looked rather human-like in terms of facial features, his nose rather small and his mouth only somewhat larger than usual, but with how swollen everything was she couldn’t tell how damaged any of it had gotten. One of his eyes was puffed out further than his eyebrow bone usually was, and she could tell just looking at it that it had been cracked at minimum. Cleaning the blood off of him took some time, and he had to go change into a different outfit completely so they could toss the stained one out, but after the work was through he looked relatively normal, all things considered.

To get up to the roof they had to climb out the window and hope for the best, something that they’d done before for picnic dates underneath the stars, and Maki made sure she was securely on his back before he threw open a window and squeezed out of it, getting up onto the roof with the help of his long arm span. Once they were up top, she climbed off of him and turned her eyes to the sky, seeing the flashing lights of the patrol helicopter and feeling a sickness in the pit of her stomach. “Yeah, I can see a few constellations myself, but I’m sure you with your much better vision can see more,” she said, hoping to draw him into what they had gone outside for. “Tell me all about what you see, Kaito. I love to hear you tell me about the stars.”

He flopped onto the roof and leaned his head back, resting his arms behind it for a little bit of leverage. “There’s so many, I don’t even know where to start talking,” he admitted, as she curled up on his chest, wanting nothing more than to hear him talk about what he loved in that moment, as a reminder that he was okay. “Tell me which ones you know, Harukawa, and I’ll tell you the ones you’re missing.”

There were words on the tip of her tongue that she kept trying to ignore, but it became too much to keep pushing past them to talk about the starry sky. “Please, call me Maki. There’s no need to have me keep going by my patrol name when I’m not one of them anymore.”

“Maki? Like…the food?” She could hear him lick his lips at the mention of food, and she laughed and told him that he was correct. “Oh man, I wish I could have a cool name like Maki! Is it too late to change mine to match yours?”

“It is, but I was thinking that, since my old name is possessed by those monsters who did this to you, maybe I could take your name as an alias? People won’t know who I am right away if I’m using a different name.” There were so many flaws in her plan, but Maki knew enough about the way human-demon relationships were meant to work that she knew asking for anything else from him would be illegal. “Then, when we get somewhere that isn’t crawling with people who’d want me dead, we can reevaluate things.”

“So I can’t be Kaito Maki, but you can be Maki Kaito?” he asked, confused at the name she was referring to, which again made her laugh and have to explain that she meant the name he’d picked for himself. “Ah, so you’d be a Momota too, is that right?”

“For now, yeah. At least until we’re somewhere that we’ll both be safe.” It was funny, Maki had spent so much of her life thinking that she needed to be hero for the humans from the non-humanized demons, but now she was embracing the fact that she needed to be a hero for her favorite demon. “Who knows when that’ll be, and what we’ll be like when we get there. Could be this week, could be in a couple years, but we’ll find that safety somewhere.”

He moved his arms so that he could wrap her up in them, pushing her deeply into his strong chest that she loved so much. “I thought you always said you felt safe when I held you like this, so I’m giving you that safety right now.”

“I do feel safe like this, but I need you to feel safe too. With the people who raised me around, I don’t think either of us will actually be safe, so we need to find somewhere new to spend our lives.” She sighed, taking in the smell of his demon skin as well as the remnant blood from before, as she nuzzled herself right into his collarbone. “But that’s something we can worry about later, tell me about the stars up in the sky right now.”

After taking a moment to enjoy how they were positioned, Kaito went right into rattling off all of the space facts he could recall in that moment, occasionally pulling an arm off of Maki to point at a specific area in the sky. She was listening to his voice but not his words, her mind running wild with all of the logistics of what she knew they needed to do. Safe havens for demons were easy to come by, but for demons who were attached to humans it would be less likely to find anywhere, even if she could promise that she knew how to protect herself and others. Kaito’s humanization would be helpful in getting him into a human settlement, but there would be prejudices from any other humans and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to be civil if someone tried to pick a fight with him when she was around. Plus, once anyone found out about their dubiously romantic relationship, there could be a lot of issues that rose from that, and she wasn’t giving up her love just because of the stigmas.

She wasn’t stupid, after all, and she knew that there had been plenty of illicit human-demon romances across history. She could play the role of his hero and his lover at once, and despite his demon label Kaito was quite the hero himself, having saved her from herself time and time again. They were an inseparable pair, and they were going to make their lives work one way or another.

“Are you listening to me, Haru—Maki?” Kaito asked, snapping her out of her thoughts and bringing her back to their nighttime excursion on the rooftop. “I was saying that there’s a constellation that looks kinda like a hand and that I wanted to hold it. But I can’t hold the hand of some stars, so can I hold yours instead?”

He was so charming, so loving, and so perfect, hating him for what he was just didn’t seem plausible to Maki, and she knew she was going to make everyone who’d hurt him pay. “Of course you can, Kaito, always and forever.”


	12. The Warring Kingdoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Seven, Prompt One: AU

Once upon a time there were neighboring kingdoms with a shared border that represented all of the struggles and issues that the rulers on either side faced. On one side was the kingdom of Hoshido, which had an aging king and queen that had been childless in their lives, but had taken in many children from families who could not support them to raise as their own. The other side was home to the kingdom of Nohr, with its king who took many wives in search of the perfect heir to his throne; he was ruthless in his standards and refused to claim a child as his own if they did not fit the bill of his expectations.

The Nohrian king’s first wife bore twin girls who were both filled with the spirit that the king wanted his children to carry, but as neither was male he felt that they could not be raised as his heirs. His second wife also bore twins, two boys who would have made for perfect heirs if one hadn’t been so helpless at birth, quiet and still compared to his more active brother. Wanting nothing to do with the weaker child, the king had him disposed of near the border, hoping that the hungry would feast on royal flesh and feel fed for once in their lives, and he went back to raise the remaining twin as his first heir, and continued trying for further successors to the throne.

A Hoshidan woman found the abandoned child and took him in for herself, only to find that his skin was marked with a curious symbol—a notation that she recognized as being related to the royal family of Nohr. Instead of trying to get him back over the border to where she felt he belonged, she took him to her own capital city and let her king and queen, elderly as they were, look onto the child and decide that they would raise him as their own, giving the kind woman an infant of similar age from the city to raise. Several years later, this swap proved deadly as the Nohrian king, realizing that he’d given up a child with blood ties to him, went to reclaim what had been his and murdered the woman to take back her son, which was neither hers _nor_ his at all.

The boy was then raised as being the Nohrian prince, different from his supposed twin brother who reveled in doom and gloom, and his three sisters, two older and one younger, who all had devious intentions with their lives. His name was Makoto, the name given to him by his birth parents and had been retained in all of the parenting swaps he’d gone through, and he learned upon turning eighteen years old that he was not the prince he’d been raised to believe he was. This was not news given to his so-called father or siblings, but to him and him alone, by way of a kindly messenger who’d come from Hoshido because she’d had a vision to share with the Nohrian king.

That vision was, in all honesty, a complete lie, and she’d used it to get herself within speaking range of the prince. Makoto didn’t believe the truth at first, but after hearing of his stark differences from his siblings (things told to him by his personal servant, as well as the few friends his father had allowed for him to have growing up), he knew that he was not being steered incorrectly and that he needed to leave Nohr at once. Sneaking out was beyond difficult, but he and his friends were able to make it to Hoshido without conflict, and from there getting to the capital to speak to the king and queen was paramount.

In Hoshido, the boy raised as the prince was unaware of his ties to the neighboring country, knowing only that his parents had taken him in because they saw he had the ability to succeed as monarch someday. His name was Hajime, and he was know to his people as the Prince of Hope, and when Makoto and his entourage made it to meet him and his parents, the first thing Makoto said to him was that he’d been raised as one of the Princes of Despair, and that he was there to rebuke that title because it did not belong to him.

Predictably, Hajime did not want to give up his position as prince in Hoshido, the only home he’d ever known, to get a similar role in a different country, a decision that everyone around him seemed to support. He assured his parents that he would stay loyal to them until then end, then sent for a delegation to meet one from Nohr at the border, to discuss the mix-up and set everything straight. The battle that erupted from the meeting was bloody and Makoto and his friends, who’d crossed enemy lines from the family that had raised him, were left in the middle to make a difficult choice: did they turn back to Nohr and try to help the family he’d known get their proper prince back, or did they align with Hoshido and fight to let Hajime retain the crown he’d been raised to wear?

The decision was not an easy one to make, but choosing to stay with the Prince of Hope and fight against the royal children known as the Despair Quartet and all of their friends was what they ultimately went with. There were many sleepless nights, many days spent coming up with risky strategies to try and get an upper-hand in the war that the whole ordeal had started, and many moments where recruiting others into the efforts of the army were necessary. Makoto wasn’t much of a tactical leader, but his closest friend Kyoko was, and between her and Hajime they were able to make decent enough plans for their makeshift army to follow.

It was roughly a year after the first blood had been drawn and the army was sitting around their headquarters, nestled in the mountains of Hoshido near the border. “We’re never going to get anywhere in these war efforts if we spend all of our time sitting around here,” a ninja by the name of Maki grumbled, lobbing one of her shuriken towards the ground and watching it sink right into the dirt. “They should just let me lead things from here, I know how to get right into the heart of Nohr.”

“Y’know, that wouldn’t sound so bad if it wasn’t immediately going to get us killed,” her companion, a fighter named Kaito, said in reply, knowing that they’d rescued her on one of their few excursions into Nohrian territory, after she’d gotten trapped in a winless situation with one of the Despair Quartet. “I love ya, Maki Roll, but maybe we should listen to the leaders here, they should know what’s best for us.”

“Don’t tell me you love me,” she snapped in reply, getting off of her makeshift chair to retrieve her shuriken. “That’s sappy shit that I don’t have time for in the middle of a war.”

There was a tapping noise across the room, and both of them looked to see Kyoko and Hajime giving one of their strategy meetings, which were easy enough to ignore when they weren’t talking about anything interesting. “Shouldn’t the two of you be paying attention?” Makoto asked them, coming up behind them both and nearly earning a shuriken to the face for his sudden appearance. “H-hey, I’m just asking, it’s kind of important that everyone knows what the new plan is, just in case…”

“Just in case _what_?” Maki asked, huffing as she took her seat back. “We’re not going to be attacking them straight-on, so I don’t know what good there is for all of us knowing the plan right now.”

“If you were listening you’d already know what the ‘just in case’ is,” another voice pointed out, belonging to a small mage sitting a little bit over from them, her hat in her hands and her eyes looking sleepy. “Kyoko’s talking about some kind of magic stuff even I’ve never heard of.”

“That’s right, Himiko! They’re called Deeprealms,” Makoto said, smiling over at the mage only to see her turn her head and stare in boredom at the presentation still happening. “Since a…lot of our army members have started getting romantically involved, Kyoko thought it was about time that we talked about these with everyone, just in case someone needs to use one of them.”

Maki stared blankly at Makoto, while Kaito was tapping the side of his head in thought, trying to recall something right on the tip of his tongue. “Yeah, I’ve heard about these Deeprealms before,” he told them, sounding proud of himself even though Maki turned her stare towards him in response. “Aren’t they, like, magic places that people don’t actually understand? Or is it that I just don’t understand them?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the second option,” Maki muttered under her breath.

Kaito must not have noticed what she’d said, but Makoto certainly did, as he shook his head at her. “No, most people don’t understand how they work, and we don’t really either. We did find that sometimes time goes slower in them than it does outside, and other times it’s way faster, and either way we can make them work for us.”

“How are we supposed to make use of those?” Kaito asked, and for once Maki was thankful that he put the question out there because she was curious herself, even with her negative attitude towards things. “Wouldn’t that mess up our war efforts?”

“If they’re not used correctly, sure, but I’m positive that everyone here would use them as intended! I bet Kyoko could answer more questions about them, since that’s really all that I know.” He shrugged and continued going around the room, leaving the pair to look between each other in confusion, both feeling the same way about being clueless regarding what the Deeprealms were supposed to do for them.

It became a bit clearer a few weeks later, after they’d all gathered back in the Hoshidan capital for a wedding, a ceremony held in the castle but in relative secrecy, as the Prince of Hope took on a bride that had been with him since the start, a girl from the capital that he’d gotten to grow up with. Everyone in the army was happy that one of their leaders had gotten married, but it raised more questions than answers—especially after the couple disappeared not long after the ceremony, leaving for one night but coming back acting like they’d been gone for longer. That was the power of the Deeprealms, everyone learned: getting to sneak away for personal reasons and not impacting time in the real world too much, and Hajime and Chiaki’s getaway was their first example of the realms that sped up time.

Now that they had witnessed the first wedding between members of the army, more quickly followed, and soon it was impossible to get anywhere without finding at least one person who’d been married during their time in the war. That was also true for Maki and Kaito, even though they’d skipped the actual ceremony part of things and had gotten the army’s cleric to quickly marry them together, but they tried not to act like they’d done something so drastic without everyone knowing. They even forewent the now-traditional time spent together in a Deeprealm just to maintain the sense of normalcy that everyone expected from the two of them.

The second example of the realm that sped up time came months later, when a visibly frantic Makoto was trying to direct everyone to follow rules as they made a march from their headquarters to a battle outpost closer to the Nohrian capital. “Isn’t it a bit weird that he’s the one in charge right now?” Maki asked Kaito under her breath, knowing that she should’ve been acting stealthily somewhere else in the corps while he was lugging his axe along with him. “Usually it’s Kyoko or Hajime, and neither of them are here today…”

“It is weird, now that you point it out,” Kaito replied, scanning the army for any sign of either person she’d mentioned and not finding them. “I hope everything’s okay, usually we get told when someone’s sitting back and I don’t think I heard a thing about this one.”

“Yeah, hopefully everything’s okay.” The last Maki recalled hearing about Hajime was someone talking about him needing to be back at the capital for the queen as her health was fading, but that had been weeks before and she hadn’t heard word since. Kyoko, on the other hand, had been around before they’d left, and now she’d simply disappeared into thin air. “Actually…I think I have an idea where at least one of them is, but it’s stupid and I’m not sure I want to say it.”

The wording didn’t faze Kaito, not even when he remembered that it wasn’t typical of Maki to act that way. “Hit me with it, Maki Roll. I’m ready for whatever it is.”

“Well, the prince is probably still with his family, even if it’s weird he’s been there that long with no word, but Kyoko? What if she’s in a Deeprealm?” She hated that her mind had jumped to the conclusion that it had, but the pieces were coming together and she had little reason to doubt them. “Think about it, Kaito, we’re being led by Makoto, who doesn’t know the first thing about helming this army. He’s panicking, and all we’re doing is marching. Something’s going on with Kyoko and he’s freaking out about it, and I’m willing to bet she’s in a Deeprealm to handle it.”

He nodded along with the reasoning, but the conclusion didn’t seem to jive well in Kaito’s mind. “I don’t get what she’d need to be there for. Did she get hurt or something? I could’ve sworn she was out flinging spells just yesterday and everything was fine…”

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I think she’s manipulating time with the Deeprealm. I think she’s hiding there because she’s…because she…” The pieces were all there in order, but Maki couldn’t stomach the thought of saying what she’d concluded and being dead wrong, and accusing one of the leaders of the army of such a thing. “You know what? Never mind, it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought, and I’ve had to try to rationalize a lot of your dumb antics.”

She was darting off to somewhere else within marching order before Kaito had the chance to ask her what she meant by any of that. When they got to the outpost there were members of the Nohrian army waiting for them, which they were able to dispose of with relative ease given how large their fighting force was, but as they battled Kaito himself noticed some strange things about their army. There were people who were almost always present that were missing, strong fighters and tactical minds alike, and even in the heat of the battle he found himself unable to locate where the man who’d led them there had gotten off to. After taking care of a couple lance-wielders he ran over to where Himiko had positioned herself, getting her to cover for him in battle while he kept looking around for faces he didn’t see.

There was Maki, across the outpost, stealthily taking out enemies from the cover of a bush that she was small enough to fit into. Obviously he knew where he was, and Himiko was right there with him, and he was able to name off several others that he was used to seeing fighting on their side. But Hajime was still gone, as was Kyoko, and he couldn’t locate Makoto to save his life, even though he did see Chiaki, so whatever had the prince gone was not bad enough to require her presence. He felt like he could breathe easier knowing that things weren’t as bad as they could have been, but the missing people were still a problem.

Once the battle had concluded and the outpost could be considered held by the Hoshidan army, he and Maki met back up to discuss what they’d noticed. She claimed to have been focused more on fighting than keeping tabs on people, teasing him for admitting to relying on Himiko rather than his own brute strength, but when he told her that he’d lost sight of Makoto during the ordeal she visibly flushed. “Y-yeah, that fits right in with my idea of where Kyoko is,” she admitted, shrinking back and looking much smaller than she usually did. “I’m sorry, Kaito, but I don’t want to spread baseless rumors about our commander, of all people. You’ll have to wait until—”

“Did you hear?” Bounding over to them with her own axe in hand, Kaito’s female fighter counterpart Tenko looked disgusted towards him before giving Maki the biggest smile. “They’re hopefully having their baby soon!”

“ _What_?” Kaito loudly, rudely asked, while Maki gave a sigh of relief, certain that she knew what it pertained to and that she’d been right all along. “Who’s out here having a baby? In war? I’ve gotta give ‘em a piece of my mind!”

“Kyoko and Makoto are,” Maki said, before Tenko was able to get a word out, but her eager nodding only proved the hypothesis. “That’s why we saw her before but not during the march, and why he disappeared. They’re using one of those Deeprealms, aren’t they?”

“Himiko’s tried explaining the magic behind them to me and they make no sense, but apparently they’re gonna have the kid in the one they first found, then move them to another where they can live safely until they’re old enough to be wrapped up in war.” Tenko shrugged, unsure if her own relaying of what she’d heard was correct. “I mean, the degenerate should’ve thought twice about making a kid in this kind of time, but I get it, they get bored and lonely when we’re not planning battles. It was bound to happen.”

As Tenko jumped away to pass on the information to the next group she came across, Maki turned to look at Kaito and his passionate expression, the way he looked like he was about to throw hands with the next person who talked to him funny. “That’s what I wasn’t sure about telling you,” she explained, “and now you get why I didn’t want to mention it. You clearly have some thoughts about the whole thing, and I—”

“No one told me that you could start making babies during this war and cause zero problems with it,” he said to her, stopping her mid-sentence. “If I’d known that…well, I don’t know what I would’ve done with the information but it would’ve been neat to know!”

“—Kaito, I’m not having your child in the middle of war. Stealth’s my thing, remember?” Sure, they could make use of the time speeding powers of Deeprealms to make it a much easier process, but Maki had yet to step foot in one of them and she wasn’t completely sold on how they worked, even if everyone else seemed to believe in them. “You wouldn’t catch me dead having a kid out here.”

* * *

Fate had a funny way of dealing with someone who spoke in absolute statements, similar to giving someone a rude gesture in the midst of conversation. Several weeks after the outpost battle, after everyone had returned to the army for better or for worse, the discussion was raised about what was going to happen then. “We’ll have to go check on him sooner rather than later,” Kyoko said, in reference to what everyone knew was the child she and Makoto had been trying to keep secret. “If we wait too long, we’ll have lost his whole life without getting to spend a moment of it with him.”

“His Deeprealm’s closer to the headquarters, so we’ll have to head back to make this work, but…” Makoto sighed, shaking his head. “I’ve heard a lot of rumors about Deeprealms being overtaken by thugs without anyone knowing. We should bring a few extra people with us, just in case there’s any threats.”

The general consensus among the army was that they’d all make the trip and the selection of who would get to go into the Deeprealm would be made along the way, to speed things up. It was strange doubling back as a whole during such a crucial part of the campaign, but it was deemed necessary and so they all went, with lively spirits the whole way. The entrance to the realm was somewhere in the mountains that the parents seemed familiar with, but looked like just another trailhead to everyone else, and it was there that the assignments for who stayed and who went were given.

As one of the people selected to go, for her reliance on stealth in battle, just in case scouting was needed, Maki felt nerves begin to build up in her chest before the entrance to the realm opened up. “You’re going to be fine in there, promise,” Kaito assured her, giving her a small nuzzle on the top of the head (even though everyone knew they were together, it was no secret when they shared a tent or bed every night). “If you’re not, I’ll go in there and take care of things for you.”

She weakly smiled, before the command to enter was given as the portal opened in front of all of them. Stepping through the boundary was completely bizarre, and she wouldn’t have recommended it to anyone, but no sooner than when she gotten onto the other side, her and everyone else who’d entered finding themselves in a small village rather than the mountains, did she start feeling physically miserable. Every breath felt like it was going to be her last, her whole body feeling weak and sickly as she stood completely still, while everyone else was beginning to push forward into the village. It was Kyoko who turned around to see who their straggler was, and when she saw that Maki seemed frozen in place, she ran back to her, telling everyone else to continue on. “You need to get out of here,” Kyoko sternly said, gesturing towards the spot they’d entered in for the portal to reappear. “Right now, get out before this hurts you any more than it already has.”

“H-hurts me?” Maki asked, barely able to speak without succumbing to the feeling that she needed to expel everything that was inside of her body. “I don’t understand, Kyoko.”

“Just…go! Now!” Being commanded to do something by someone with such power was not anything Maki wanted to argue against, and she managed to make her way out of the portal and back to the waiting army in the mountains, feeling mostly the same once she was taking in the crisp air she’d been used to inhaling.

The murmurs that rose in the group were able to be heard but not able to be understood, as Maki found herself stumbling into the closest patch of trees and bushes, falling to her knees and beginning retching. She’d never felt so helpless in her life, and she swore she would’ve been fine if she hadn’t stepped foot inside that Deeprealm. “Hey, uh, Maki Roll, what’s going on right here?” she heard Kaito asking her, but she didn’t have the strength to give him a reply, hoping that the sounds of her being sick would be enough to give him a clue.

When he found her, he immediately crouched down beside her and rest a hand on her back, massaging it as well as he could. He stayed with her in silence until she seemed to be finished getting sick, and once she raised her head he moved so that he could help her to her feet, keeping his eyes strangely locked on her face. “Let me guess, I’m a mess,” she said, noticing where his gaze was focused. “It’s the damn Deeprealm, I go into one _one_ time and…this happens to me.”

“Yeah, uh, not gonna lie, you are a mess, but…” He was trying to smile, but she could notice that tears were forming at the corners of his eyes, which was incredibly strange for Kaito, of all people. “Maki Roll, how long have you known?”

“How long have I known what?” She was still feeling weak from getting sick, so she chalked up her stupidity in the situation to that, but when Kaito grabbed her hands and moved them to that they were cradling a tiny stomach bump she hadn’t had when she’d entered the Deeprealm, she immediately knew what he was referring to and wanted to scream. “Well now everything makes perfect sense, now doesn’t it?” she asked out loud, mostly for herself because he certainly didn’t know what she was referring to. “No wonder she wanted me out of there as fast as she did, who knows what would’ve happened if I’d stayed too long.”

He was actually crying, now wrapping her up in a hug that squeezed her a bit too tightly for her liking. “You mean you didn’t know before you went inside? You mean this is us finding this out right now? You mean that—”

“Stop sounding so excited, but yes. That’s all what I mean.”

“—we’re gonna be _parents_ , Maki! We’ve got to figure all this stuff out before anything else happens, I can’t believe that it’s happening though and that’s amazing!” He really was excited, even though she was radiating anger at what they’d allowed themselves to get into, yet no matter how upset she was about their current situation, she couldn’t fully put down his excitement. At least it wouldn’t be any sort of a surprise to anyone else in the army that they’d gotten themselves entrenched in the baby-making business, even though she’d always been so insistent that anything of the sort would wait until after the war.

They stayed there in the bushes until they heard everyone else come back through the portal, re-entering their world from the Deeprealm, but before either of them could leave where they’d been talking about the daunting prospects waiting for them, Kyoko came into view, looking frantic and concerned. “Why did you allow yourself to enter with us if you knew you were with child?” she asked, the concern in her voice evident. “We’ve warned this entire army about doing that and how it can end up being detrimental.”

“If I’d known I would’ve said something about it,” Maki replied, not exactly comfortable with the fact that it was business that everyone would be discussing now, but knowing that there wasn’t anything that could be done to prevent that. “I had no idea that anything was going on until I was inside the Deeprealm, then you had me get out when you did.” Perhaps she had known something was amiss, deep down inside her, based on how apprehensive she’d been to be part of the group to enter, but that had felt like a fear of approaching an unknown place. “What did you mean by that, by the way? Something hurting me more than it already had?”

“Deeprealms are strange places that none of us are quite sure about the specific workings of, we just know what we’ve been told unless we’ve experienced it ourselves.” Kyoko turned to look out at where everyone else was still gathered, before looking back at the couple and shaking her head. “Time has strange effects on people when you’re inside them. For the most part, you won’t feel anything different, but at certain stages of your life it does seem to have a more pronounced effect on you, as we can see with what happened to you while inside.”

“Y-yeah, I had no idea that…this was a thing.” Motioning towards that tiny stomach bump that she’d not known to expect, which Kaito had yet to stop holding onto even though he had no reason for it, Maki watched Kyoko nod in understanding. “So I guess that’s that, then. I know not to enter any Deeprealms for a while, but then what? You’ve been through it, you can tell me how it works, right?”

The grimace that made its way to Kyoko’s face was a clear indication of how little she actually wanted to assist with anything, despite being in a position of command over the army. “As far as I know, it works a bit differently for everyone. I spent quite a bit of time isolating myself within various Deeprealms over the course of several days, making sure that I was here when I needed to be before disappearing to get things over faster, but I did end up spending actual months by myself, just to keep the burden of bearing a child in this time to a minimum. I’m not sure that’s what you wanted to hear, though.”

“Honestly? I didn’t want to ever hear about any of this because I _needed_ to know it. Let’s just…discuss this some other time, I’m sure everyone wants to get back to the headquarters or something.” There was no arguing there, even though Kyoko made it obvious she was not going to be much help in discussing the matter going forward, and the three of them rejoined the main group, everyone trying to ignore what had happened when they’d watched Maki fall from the portal and keep their distance from her, just to not irritate her. The walk back to base felt longer than it would have otherwise, but once they’d returned everyone was going their separate ways as they waited to piece together what was going to come next for them all.

Over the coming weeks, more military action was taken and they once again returned to the command post in Nohr to try and push further into enemy territory. Even with the clearly judgmental looks she was getting from everyone she fought alongside, Maki made sure that she did not give up her place in the army, not flinching from getting close to the front lines as an attempt to distract and stop approaching enemies from a distance. With every battle came the need to regroup and figure out what to do next, whether it was backtrack again and look at things from the safety of home, or to keep pushing forward, and as the months went on the army began making more and more decisive moves to put a stop to the conflict once and for all. As they went deeper into Nohrian territory, it became a bit of an issue that they had someone in their ranks who should not have still been with them, but no one was going to try telling her that, not when she hadn’t lost even a bit of her deadly accuracy with her weapons despite everything else going on.

It was nearly half a year since the incident with the Deeprealm when, in the middle of their march on to the next battlefield, which would put them right outside the Nohrian capital, just within striking range of the end of the war, one of the other higher-ups of the army dropped back on his horse to speak to the pair of stragglers taking up the rear. “I’m not saying this to you as someone who the leaders trust,” Shuichi said, giving a timid glance in Kaito’s direction before looking at Maki, “but as someone who cares about you both. I think maybe it’d be best if you chose to sit this next battle out, in case—”

“I’m not sitting _anything_ out,” Maki snapped, having figured that he’d come just to tell her that exact thing. It wasn’t every day that the person Kyoko had decided to take under her wing (a decision made in the aftermath of a couple nearly failed battles when she’d been distracted with other things, namely her now-grown child trying to fight for himself) decided to come talk to them, even though he was their friend. “I know you all think I’m endangering myself by continuing to fight but when’s the last time someone hit me in battle? Before all this happened. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“—yes, I know that, but…” Sighing, Shuichi let his horse rear up before charging forward, only to turn to try blocking the two in, grabbing a tome to hold in case he needed to get more intimidating. “I should have done it this way from the start. You’re sitting the next battle out to give yourself time to breathe, because the commanders need you back to normal sooner rather than later. I’ve already found somewhere for you to go, and if all goes well then you’ll be back with us tomorrow.”

What he was talking about hit them both at the same time, and Maki’s immediate instinct was to try and run past the horse to get away from his news. There was a _reason_ she’d let things go on for as long as she had, and there was no way that anyone was going to force her into a Deeprealm, as just the thought of entering one had made her heart start racing. Kaito grabbed her before she could charge, holding her in place with his arms wrapped around her as tightly as he could. “Let’s just go ahead and follow him, it’s gotta be done for the good of everyone,” he said, looking at Shuichi and watching his friend nod slowly. “I’m sure he’s heard enough about how badly this needs to happen.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this,” Maki spat, trying to get out of Kaito’s grasp but being unable to do so, her heavily pregnant body obnoxious to maneuver in such tight confines. “I’m perfectly fine, I can still fight and I’ve been fighting like everyone else for months! Just because everyone else backed out and went into the Deeprealms to get back to fighting form faster doesn’t mean I need to!”

At once, both men had one thing to say to her: “Maki, you need to stop.” Kaito’s words were said with concern, but Shuichi’s were said with more of a forceful tone behind them, a voice that he rarely used. He was the one who continued to speak as they moved on, away from the group as a whole. “I’m not going to act like I understand why you’re so against going into Deeprealms, but we’ve had to do so many battles inside them as of late and not being able to call on you to help has been rough. If you would’ve just taken care of this sooner you would have been able to beat down quite a few stubborn enemies trying to attack the army’s children, but instead…”

That had been a big part of why it had taken them six months to get so close to the capital, because every few weeks they were having to reroute the entire army to fend off attackers in someone’s child’s Deeprealm. “Instead I savored my time not committing crimes against the universe by manipulating everything in one of those realms,” Maki indignantly told him, feeling Kaito’s grip on her tighten just based on her fighting words. “I’m not going into a Deeprealm, not now and not ever.”

“H-hey wait a minute, I have an idea! What if I go in with you? Will that make it easier for you to handle bein’ in there, if I’m by your side?” Kaito’s suggestion was well-received by one of the two he was with, but as that one was Shuichi he wasn’t given the reaction he was hoping for. Maki responded by throwing her head back into him, hitting his throat and making him cough and sputter for a moment, but his grip did not loosen. “C’mon, Maki Roll, you’ve gotta just go through with this. It’s for the best of everyone, whether you wanna think it is or not.”

Her protests continued for as long as they walked, but when they came to the flower-filled ravine that Shuichi was leading them towards, she quieted down, although her feelings on the matter had not changed. “Here it is,” he said, pointing a hand towards an empty side of the former riverbank. “Kyoko wasn’t thrilled when she found out it’d be in Nohrian territory, and so far from the border, but she allowed for it to happen anyway. I’ll open the portal, the two of you go inside and…I’ll see you when you come back out.”

One moment the riverbank was bare, dirt and rocks that had been forsaken by the water that had once roared against it, and then the next had it shining with a portal that made Maki’s whole body begin to ache. She couldn’t find the words inside herself to explain why she was so against going inside, opening her mouth to only find air, but Kaito wasn’t going to wait for her to say anything at all. He lifted her up off her feet (even with her larger form he was able to do it easily) and together they went inside, Shuichi waiting until they’d disappeared to take a guarding position in front of the remnant portal.

He waited for a couple hours before a similar sight came back out, the biggest difference being how Maki had almost entirely returned to looking how she had before anything had happened. “I’m going to assume it all went well in there?” he asked, noticing the couple didn’t seem overenthusiastic or even emotional at all, prompting him to follow up with, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“It went fine, now let’s just go back to where the army’s staying so we can act like nothing happened at all.” There was a sense of exhaustion in Maki’s voice when she spoke, and based on how she was leaning against Kaito after he’d set her down on her own two feet it was clear that she’d not gotten much rest while inside the Deeprealm. “We’ll talk about what happened some other time, maybe when everyone’s around to hear it so we don’t have to say it more than once.”

“That’s fair,” he conceded, tucking the book he’d been reading to pass the time back into his horse’s saddlebag. “Go ahead and close the portal and then you can hop on the horse with me, I’m sure Kaito can handle the walk back.” The concept of them closing the portal themselves was odd, but Maki found it easy to just hold her hand up to the shimmering light and watch it slip away, as if she was the only one who had the power to do it. She was then helped up onto the back of the horse and before they’d even gotten out of the ravine she was dozing off, getting sleep she’d missed in the weeks they’d been inside the Deeprealm.

Everything made perfect sense in why she was told it would be best for her to sit the next battle out, because she couldn’t remember making it back to their base camp for the night, nor did she wake up when they were rallying the troops for the day’s fight. When she did wake up it was to an almost barren camp, the members of the army left behind all doing their own things. Maki had gotten used to being one of the ones that stuck back, although it was usually by choice due to where the fighting was taking place, but it was strange to not be included in such a major battle. She saw that Himiko was still around, sitting and practicing some of her spells on a plant, so she went over to her to strike up conversation.

While they were talking, a couple of the children that had gotten pulled out of Deeprealms when they’d been invaded came by, and just the sight of the two blonde girls distracted Maki from whatever she’d been saying. “Himiko, you don’t think _everyone_ ’s going to have two children during this damn war, do you?” she asked, watching the sisters until they disappeared into the forest. “I don’t think I could go through that again, especially not now.”

“It seems like it’s a rare thing.” Himiko replied, her eyes not having lifted from the plant she’d infused with wind magic, the petals on its flowers spinning like windmills. “I would think you have nothing to worry about.”

“I hope I don’t, or else we might be down an axe-wielder.” Maki was insistent her fear wasn’t going to come true on her watch, even though she’d been helpless to prevent the other thing she hadn’t wanted to see happen; she made it very clear to Kaito that if they were ever going to have another child, it would have to be after the war when she wouldn’t need to go inside a Deeprealm. He was receptive to the idea of waiting, knowing very well what had happened on the first go-round, and that was where they left it, her thinking she’d be able to finish the war without needing to go inside another one of those cursed spaces again.

That discussion happened during a long trek back towards Hoshido, where they’d been told the Despair Quartet had taken hold of the capital to try and dissuade the army from overtaking Nohr as a whole. While they were on their way, they’d taken a night to tell everyone about what had happened between them inside their own Deeprealm, and while most everyone was happy with the news, there was one person who wasn’t quite as joyful. “I suppose that means we should go rescue the child now before we’re done with Nohr overall,” Kyoko mused, shooting a pointed glare in Shuichi’s direction because she’d known of his involvement. “I’m not certain it’ll have been enough time for the child to be of age to fight in this army, but I’d rather we bring them along than abandon them forever.”

“Actually, I was sort of hoping we’d get back to _her_ later,” Maki said, causing a hushed silence to fall over the group. “What? We all know how I feel about going in those places, this shouldn’t be any sort of a surprise.”

“Coming into Nohr after this war is over may not be an option, Maki,” Hajime replied, having been the one to get intimately familiar with the law codes and the terms necessary to end the war. “You could be hunted for being part of the Hoshidan army, and if that happens then no one can rescue the child. We’ll need to do it now.”

“And I’m saying we’re not going to. She’ll be fine in there until after everything, then I’ll come get her myself. I’m plenty stealthy, I can do it on my own.” Even with that reminder, the decision was made that they’d go get the child from her Deeprealm before heading back to Hoshido, perhaps permanently, and so the next day that journey took place.

The ravine was still as pristine and flowery as it had been when they’d left it weeks before, and both Maki and Kaito felt themselves being drawn to the spot where their child’s portal could be opened. As Maki did the honors of opening it, the army behind her figuring out who would go in to assist in case of attack, something struck Kaito and put him into a panic. “There’s a chance something’s gone wrong and I’ve gotta…no, I need to be the one to put a stop to it!” he shouted, jumping into the shimmering light the first chance he could.

“Go, chase him down and make sure he doesn’t do anything reckless!” Kyoko ordered, and Maki reluctantly nodded, giving the portal a sour expression before she stepped inside of it. Like the first time she’d entered, she was put down into a world where the ravine was flowing with water, flower petals drifting across the surface, and she immediately was on edge being inside the place yet again.

Unsure of how long it had been in the Deeprealm since she’d last been there, she chose to go towards the place she’d ultimately chosen as the spot to give birth to her child, somewhere deep in the grove of vine-covered trees that bordered a little village. They’d only learned about the village after the fact, carrying with them a bloodied newborn that needed to be cleaned up and properly dressed, who they gave up to a milkmaid in one of the homes who said she’d raise the child until they returned. Going to the village would have made more sense, but an irrational train of thought had overtaken Maki’s mind and she was not going to ignore it for anything.

It was Kaito’s voice that she heard as she got close to the bramble where their baby had taken her first breaths, and even though she _knew_ it belonged to him, she still had shuriken at the ready to attack with. At the bramble she saw him sitting down, his axe draped across his lap and his eyes shifted down towards it. “I failed,” he said, oddly solemnly for his usually exuberant personality. “There were a bunch of bandits in the village and I couldn’t hit a single one of ‘em. I just…missed every swing I took. Bet they’ve already hurt her, if not killed her. What kind of father am I, lettin’ that happen?”

“Bandits?” Maki repeated, not wanting to let herself linger on the negative parts of what Kaito had said. “We’ve got to stop them. Everyone else’ll go right to the village, I’m sure, so we can meet them there.” She offered him a hand to get back to his feet, and while he didn’t seem enthusiastic about having to go try fighting again they both ran towards the village, finding it simply crawling with thugs and bandits alike. After giving Kaito a judgmental look asking if he’d really attempted to take down that many enemies on his own, Maki prepared to start fighting as they waited for the rest of their allies, but she hesitated on throwing the first shuriken when she saw someone dressed completely different from the bandits running in their direction, axe held high over their head as they charged.

As the person got closer they began to make out more about them, seeing their long, nearly black hair trailing out behind them, their determined expression as they ran, the way that they couldn’t have been more than a meter and a half tall, if even that much—the way she threw their axe aside as she charged straight into hugging Kaito, him staring down at the girl with his jaw dropping fast. “Daddy! You came to save me!” the girl’s voice called, as she turned her head up to look into her father’s wide eyes. “I was beginning to worry that you weren’t coming back, but you’re here!”

“I am here, yeah,” he replied, mouthing to Maki about how he was being hugged by their _daughter_. “And we’re gonna protect you, my sweet Tsukia. I promise you won’t have to fight anyone ever.”

“But I want to fight? I just can’t take everyone on my own!” Tsukia laughed, pulling herself off of him and brushing down her clothes, which were decorated in stars sewn into the fabric. “I was minding my own, watching the clouds on the rooftops when these guys started causing trouble, and since I’m your kid I knew I’d have to be the hero and protect everyone.”

“That’s cute, she thinks she has to be the hero.” Maki smiled at the girl, who pursed her lips together before running to grab her axe, which looked to be just as well-worn as her father’s, brandishing it like she was about to attack. “Whoa there, don’t you know who I am?”

She paused, looking Maki over from head to toe, before laughing. “Of course I do, Mommy! I’m just playing around! Do you want a hug too, or are we gonna stop wasting time and get to fighting? I can’t let my home get destroyed!”

“We can protect this place first,” she decided, watching Tsukia give a little bounce before turning and running back towards the village, ignoring when both of her parents yelled for her to stop and wait. “Oh god, that girl is exactly like you, Kaito. What did we do to cause that to happen?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not lettin’ them hurt her!” Doing exactly as the girl had before him, Kaito at least blew Maki a kiss before he was heading into the heart of the village, seemingly to protect Tsukia from getting hurt by the bandits that had already tried to show him who was boss. She shook her head, wanting to follow suit but knowing that reinforcements were on their way, and so she waited for their arrival.

Catching everyone up on what was going on was easy, but watching them all shift uncomfortably when she mentioned that the child that they’d be fighting alongside was both eager to get her hands dirty and exactly like Kaito in terms of recklessness was a lot harder. The battle plans were made and everyone descended upon the village, but Maki hung back after seeing Shuichi giving her a pleading expression. “What do you want?” she asked him once they were there alone, hopping on the back of his horse so they could talk and move easily. “I know that look you were giving me.”

“What does it feel like knowing you brought a child just like Kaito into this world?” he replied, voicing the same question she had before, although in a less joking and fun way. “I mean, I get it, you’ve seen my children and how they’re basically clones, and Kyoko’s been chasing around a kid as clueless as his father seems to be, but…Kaito. And now we have two of him.”

“In the five seconds we talked to her, Tsukia didn’t seem to be that bad.” Maki knew she wasn’t going to be able to give a full defense of the girl, barely knowing her. “I bet she’s just excited to be showing off for her dad, that’s all.”

“I’ll be hopeful with you on that. Now we should get closer to the action, I’m the only one with healing skill here right now and if anyone’s dying it’ll be on my shoulders.” Shuichi prodded his horse to move them faster, and they rode into the thick of the battle, seeing bandits getting disposed of left and right by the highly-skilled army that had come to fight them. Once they were in a good spot to help everyone at a distance, Maki jumped off the horse’s back and they began attacking with their ranged weapons, but all she could think about was how she couldn’t see her husband or daughter in the thick of the battle.

Right as she began to fear the worst for them both, she heard a loud, bellowing cry and a much higher one, and out from one of the houses came both Kaito and Tsukia, swinging their axes at anyone in their range. “That looks less like them showing off and more like them being cut from the same cloth,” Shuichi remarked, also having seen the display, and never before in her life had Maki wanted to disappear than in that moment. She hadn’t known that all of her life’s mistakes leading up to that point would end in her having a child as off-the-wall as her father, but that was exactly what had happened.

After the battle had concluded and the village was cleared of everyone causing trouble, the group made their way to the exit of the Deeprealm, Tsukia hanging onto her father’s every word that he spoke. No one said anything to the girl or Kaito, but many comments on their similarities were made to Maki, who felt herself shrinking back with every additional remark about them. Everyone seemed to think that having the two together in the same army would be a nightmare (because Tsukia had declared herself ready to fight for whatever her father thought was right, and since she was a teenager by means of the realm’s magic she wasn’t going to be turned away), but no one was going to be the one to say it wasn’t allowed to happen. Even Kyoko and Hajime weren’t going to involve themselves in making that decision, because they’d let every other child come into the folds of the Hoshidan army, including their own.

In the end, the war was won by a fighting force made up of a bunch of young adults and their teenage children, some of which took being in the war seriously and some of which thought it was nothing but a game to be played. The Nohrian royal family was subdued and dismantled, leaving only one of the princesses left to take her spot as the new Queen of Nohr, and she assured everyone that she wouldn’t cause any further issues. Hoshido’s current rulers stepped aside to let Hajime take the throne, meaning that both kingdoms were ruled by siblings of the same blood and that the divisions that had been created before could begin to heal much easier.

Those who’d taken up fighting for Hoshido settled into normal lives after that, finding their own places in the world to call their own. Maki didn’t give up living a life that relied on her stealth, even though she didn’t need to worry too much about ambushes and fighting anymore, but she did make sure that whatever she did, her boisterous, hero-minded family came with her. Together the three became known as protectors of the highlands, and if anyone dared cause trouble they’d either meet a well-aimed shuriken to the face, or a barrage of dual axes swung by the father-daughter pair known as the Luminaries of the Stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh boy a lot of creative decisions went into this Fates AU  
> 1) I kept the names Nohr and Hoshido because at the end of the day, a clean reading experience felt worth more than stylistic choices.  
> 2) I made some interesting class/character choices if only because the classes I wanted weren't available to me (hence why Shuichi is a healing class)  
> 3) there's a lot of things that I decided on that went unused here, so I'll gladly talk your ear off about them  
> 4) I hate babyrealms but


	13. On The Other Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Seven, Prompt Two: Free (Talentswap AU)

Taking in a shaky breath, Maki checked to make sure that she was in one piece before looking out at the broken grounds of the school crumbling around her. “We…made it out?” she asked, unsure if the voice she was hearing was her own or if it belonged to someone manipulating her. After the disaster that they’d just witnessed, she couldn’t be too sure what was truth and what wasn’t; the only thing she knew for certain was that she was whole and she was out of the rocks that had tried burying her and her friends.

“It does seem to be that way,” Korekiyo’s slow, soft voice replied, him already having gotten out from under the rubble and sitting on top of a large piece of debris, his hat in one hand as he used the other to shield his eyes from the blinding light. “I was hoping that I would not need to resort to using magic to get the two of you out, and my hopes have come half-true.”

“Yeah, magic,” she scoffed, beginning to brush dust off of the red sleeves of her jacket, knowing that Kiyo was most likely unamused with her rebuking of his talent even after having been through that nightmare. “I wonder where _he_ is, though. You said half-true, so that means he’s still buried, huh?”

“Astute observation from a detective.” For some reason, the words Kiyo responded with felt like a deep cut to Maki’s soul, but before she could bring herself to take issue with them, they both heard muffled screaming from underneath nearby rocks, and they both went to assist in moving the materials enough that the purple hair on the top of Kaito’s head became visible, followed by the rest of him as they finished digging him out.

“Thanks for that,” he coughed, a mixture of dust and blood coming out of his mouth before he could stop it, and the pained smile he gave his saviors was one that they knew they couldn’t take lightly. He’d been complaining of a cough that wouldn’t quit since before the previous murder had taken place, but his issues had been overlooked because someone _else_ had been dealing with something more severe, and now that they’d been freed from the hell that was the killing game they could see that he hadn’t been joking about the problem. “Must’ve taken in too much dirt when the rocks buried me, I felt like I couldn’t breathe down there!”

Maki pursed her lips together and closed her eyes, hoping that she wasn’t going to lose him like she’d lost the other people she’d trusted in the confines of the game, no matter how weak the trust was. She’d found out that her initial ally, who she only paired up with because of his insistence on deviant behaviors, hadn’t murdered like they’d thought he had, and before that revelation she’d been dealt the back-to-back blows in losing the people with minds as sharp as hers. “Just don’t die, I can’t afford to have to bury another friend,” she told him, looking him over with his bright clothing and the smile on his face, even as he was wheezing from the dust in his lungs. “You can do that for me, can’t you?”

“Already promised Shuichi I wasn’t dying in this place, I’m planning on gettin' out of here just like the two of you.” Kaito’s voice was rough, but he was at least breathing, and aside from the initial blood it didn’t seem like more was coming up, unlike what had happened with the former friend he’d referred to. “So, what’s the plan? Either of you know what to do? Anyone find Mugi in all of that?”

Hearing him ask about the robot that had saved their lives, even when she shouldn’t have, made a pit form in Maki’s stomach, so she glanced towards Kiyo looking for assistance in answering the question. “I searched and found no sign of her or Miu,” Kiyo said after noticing Maki’s gaze focusing on him. “I suppose that would be because Mugi had to sacrifice herself to get rid of the larger threat, and she chose to spare us in the end. How fortunate.”

“She was kinda cool, even though she was a robot who didn’t know how to not pry into people’s lives. Wish she could’ve gotten out with us, but…” Kaito shrugged, finally taking in a deep breath without immediately coughing after. “It’s all good! The three of us made it, and that’s what matters now, yeah?”

“No, what matters now is getting out of this place for real.” Maki wanted to stand around and talk about what had happened to them to get to this point, but she knew that there was still one mystery left to solve, that being how to get out of their former captivity. “Once we’re out, we’ll know what the real world holds for us, if any of the crap Miu was telling us was real or if she was just being obnoxious by trying to distract our focus.”

The two men nodded, agreeing with her without needing to say a thing about it, but as they headed towards where they could see gaps in the bubble that had been trapping them, Kaito began to speak again. “It’s kinda funny, I’ve been in this place the whole time labeled as a dirty assassin, but…I really don’t know a thing about that kind of stuff.”

“You helped Shuichi learn to build a crossbow.” Kiyo pointed out, while Maki once again pursed her lips together, the revelation that was coming one she’d already pieced together not long after having met Kaito on the first day. Someone so jovial and so energetic couldn’t have lived their life as an assassin, not without risking their life or limb. “If that wasn’t assassin work I would not have the slightest idea of what to call it.”

“While I was trapped down there, tryin’ to breathe in the dark and not feel like I was dyin’, I remembered what it was I did before I got roped up in this. What my title probably should’ve been about.” He paused, looking between his companions to see Kiyo giving an interested expression while Maki’s face was completely blank. “I guess one of you probably noticed it there in my room, huh? The whole collection of medical tools and stuff that no one could explain?”

“No need to talk vaguely about me, you know as well as I do that I saw it the first time you let me inside.” It had been a fight for Maki to gain entrance to Kaito’s personal lab, because he’d been insistent no one go in there, and when she’d entered for herself she saw that for every piece of typical assassin equipment, there was a piece of unrelated medical gear that no one could explain, not even Kaito himself. Matching that with the fact that he’d been vocal about how he’d _never_ killed anyone and never wanted to, trying to denounce the title he’d been given and being so insistent about it, it meant that something hadn’t been right about him being labeled as an assassin in the first place. “You were obviously something in the medical field, and whoever put you here—Miu or Team Danganronpa, or otherwise—didn’t want you or anyone else knowing that for certain.”

“But we saw the books, medical field people have been in killing games before, it doesn’t make any sense that they’d strip me of my title if it related to that.” Pinching the bridge of his nose, Kaito looked deep in thought for a moment before shaking his head, returning to his usually cheerful expression. “It’s okay, though, I’ll get over not knowing my real truth, if any of it was actually true in the first place. Did we ever find out about that, if Miu was lying about this being lies, or…?”

Kiyo shrugged, before pointing a bandaged hand towards their destination, the broken wall they knew they needed to cross. “We shall find that out on the other side.”

“The last mystery this detective might ever solve,” Maki said with a laugh, finding humor in such a bleak situation. She’d been forced to go through so many murder investigations, accuse and implicate people she’d called her friends, watch people die on her word, and now she was getting to leave the place with someone she really, truly trusted and someone that she was glad to see get to walk out alive, all things considered. They were going right into the unknown, not sure what was going to be waiting for them after all of the information and misinformation they’d been fed during their time in the game, and as they crossed over back into what they assumed was reality, Maki’s last thought was how she hoped she’d get to see these two again.

The real world wasn’t all that much different from what they’d known in the game, although it was clear that they’d been playing some caricatures of themselves while they’d been forced to kill each other to try and escape. No one had actually died, and no one was like they’d been shown to be in the false videos presented to them in that final trial, but they still weren’t able to say they were actually the people they’d thought they were the whole time. Her detective skills hadn’t been falsified, but Maki wasn’t doing work with them by any means, aside from helping kids with missing pets that they were desolate without. She found out soon after waking up in the group home she’d lived in for most of her life that Kiyo was a magician that excelled in going beyond simple sleight-of-hand tricks, but nothing that could be classified as legitimate magic, but the understanding of how they’d gotten to that conclusion was there.

Kaito, on the other hand, was a complete mystery to her because as far as she could tell, there wasn’t a Kaito Momota that lived anywhere in the area, based on her investigations. It wouldn’t have made sense for them to give him a false name when no one else got one, but when she recalled that he’d been given a talent title that didn’t relate to what claimed to have done, the fear built within her that she wasn’t going to ever find him. But giving up was not something she’d done during the stressful trials in the game, and it wasn’t something she was going to do in the real world either, so she buckled down, reached out to everyone she could, and hoped that someone would know where he’d ended up.

Her saving grace came in the form of a phone call from a particular inventor she’d gotten to know in the game, whose inventions had helped her out once or twice. “You’ll never guess who we ran into today,” Kaede said excitedly after Maki had answered her phone, expecting casual conversation and not anything more than it. “It took us both a second to realize who it was, but when he made eye contact with Shuichi I could just _feel_ the tension there. You’ll want to know where this was, won’t you?”

“Don’t be cryptic, just tell me where you saw Kaito.”

“Touchy, aren’t we?” When Kaede laughed, Maki wished she was talking to someone slightly less peppy and slightly more respectful with language, but if she was getting a clue to where to find her comrade until the very end she was going to take what she could get. “He was working at the hospital, that’s where we ran into him. He came out into the waiting room right as we were getting ready to leave, so I don’t know what he was doing there but I do know that he recognized at least Shuichi out of all this. Might be worth your time to check it out, if you can.”

Sighing, Maki knew when she was defeated before she’d even made an attempt at sleuthing something out. “That’s great, Kaede, but I can’t just walk in and ask to talk to him. I have to have a reason for being there.”

“So come with us next week, then. We’re there every week just to make sure we’re both as healthy as we can be, I bet you’d be able to get in with us.” The offer was tempting, but Maki wasn’t sure how well it would work; she ultimately decided to go with it if only because there was no harm in giving it a shot, and Kaede was elated to hear her decision. “Great! We’ll swing by and get you before we go, just don’t mind sitting in the back with all my junk. I’m working on getting a rocket made, because Shuichi _just_ won’t shut up about how he misses the first one I made.”

There was more to that rambling, where Kaede began talking about the minutia about her project, and Maki ended up hanging up on her after trying to get a word in about needing to know specifically when she’d be getting picked up. The time to figure that out would come later, she assumed, and so she went on with her day a bit more excited for the future than she would have been otherwise. More calls were made later in the day to arrange the details of the trip, and when she went to sleep that night all Maki could think about was how she was going to solve the mystery of Kaito as soon as that glorious day rolled around.

The issue with following along with Kaede’s plan was that there was no guarantee anything would work according to it, and when Maki found herself sitting in the joint waiting room in one of the wings of the hospital, staring down a nondescript door that she’d watched both of her supposed friends go through when their appointments had been called, she hoped that she’d see Kaito come through it before she saw either of them. She’d been told it’d be about an hour before they’d leave, because while Kaede’s appointment was to make sure that the lingering strangulation wounds on her were healing nicely, Shuichi’s was a lot more involved and required more time to check the scope of whatever ailment had struck him in-game. That meant there was an hour to see Kaito doing his job, or else she’d just have to try again the following week.

Like it had happened in the story she’d been told, it was when they were leaving that he came out from the door, a clipboard in one hand and his eyes scouting the room for whoever his patient was. When Kaito saw her standing there he dropped his papers and came towards her, looking confused to see her in such a place. “I know why they’re here,” he said, motioning at Kaede and Shuichi, who were talking about what their plans were after they dropped Maki back off at home, “but what’re you doing? There’s not a damn office on this floor that needs to see ya, I think.”

“Seeing as I don’t have the slightest of clues as to what else is on this floor beyond the doctors they saw, I…” Maki trailed off as she got a glimpse of Kaito’s official badge, which didn’t label him as a doctor or a nurse, but rather as a _midwife_. “O-oh, uh, yeah, if everything else on this floor is that sort of thing I really don’t have any business being here.”

He glanced to see what had caused her to start stuttering, and when he remembered what the badge said he chuckled. “Surprising, huh? Doesn’t even closely match what they put me in the game as, and I know for a fact I’ve never killed anyone. Helped a bunch of babies come to life? Definitely. Killed someone? Nope.”

“It would explain the medical tools in your room, that’s for sure.” Her face was feeling extremely warm talking to him, knowing that most of the people in there would know what department he was with and start making assumptions. “That’s not what matters right now, though! I’m here to tell you I’d love to talk to you again. Outside of this place, obviously, but maybe we could…do coffee sometime?”

“Coffee’s not good for a growing baby, you know,” he teased, making her sputter and blush more. “No, but that sounds like a great idea, thanks Maki! Or, er, mind if I still call ya Maki Roll out here? It’s a cute name for a cute detective like you.”

“Smooth, but if you thought it’d make me forget what you already said you’re dead wrong. The name can stay, though.” She felt such a bond talking to him that it almost felt like they were back in the end moments of the game, but now that they weren’t in such a desolate place she felt almost like she could actually connect with him, get to know him better, perhaps take a chance and romance him…

Her thoughts were interrupted by him asking for her number, because he needed to get his patient back to the office for a discussion, and she gladly obliged. Everything seemed to be fated to end in their favor, and when she heard her phone go off before he’d even left the room, she guessed he felt the same way.

 _Let’s stick together until the end in this life too,_ his message to her read, and from that moment her heart was sold to him. He wasn’t an assassin, never had been, but he’d managed to kill her doubts that they wouldn’t work out in the end with one measly message. Her reply was simple: _of course. now let’s talk about that coffee date. and maybe a wedding one too? just to get the ball rolling, how about next week?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and I feel that wraps up things nicely c:


End file.
